iiiHiiii  immi 


Aii  BBJT^IN 


ANDREW  CUNNINGHAM  McLAUGHLIN 

AM., iitiO;;  RR;HIST.S. . 


Sifcaaeauaiaay 


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AMERICA'S  ENTRY  INTO  THE  WAR 


AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 


BY 

ANDREW  CUNNINGHAM  McLAUGHLIN 

A.M.,  LL.D.,  F.R.Hist!s. 

Head  of  the  Department  of  History,  Chicago  University.    Author  of 
"A  History  of  the  American  Nation,"  ''The  Con- 
federation and  the  Constitution," 
etc. 


NEW  YORK 

E.  P.  BUTTON  &  COMPANY 

681  FIFTH  AVENUE 


Copyright,  1919, 
BT  E.  P.  BUTTON  &  COMPANY 


All  Rights  Reserved 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


PEEFACE 

Of  the  papers  here  printed,  four  were  orig- 
inally given  as  lectures  at  the  University  of 
London  in  May,  1918.  The  first  was  also  given, 
with  some  slight  modifications  and  additions,  to 
a  number  of  audiences  in  the  United  Kingdom, 
generally  under  University  or  College  auspices. 
The  fifth  paper  was  read  before  the  Royal  His- 
torical Society  and  has  already  been  printed 
in  the  American  Political  Science  Review.  I 
have  consented  to  the  publication  of  the  lectures 
with  some  misgivings,  my  chief  reason  for  hesi- 
tation being  an  appreciation  of  the  fact  that 
lectures  are  not  essays;  they  are  prepared  to 
be  spoken  and,  if  put  into  print,  may  w^ell  ap- 
pear quite  difiFerent  in  tone  and  temper  and 
even  character.  Especially  is  this  likely  to 
be  the  case  when  lectures  are  thought  to  be 
adapted  to  a  special  occasion  and  a  particular 
audience. 

It  is,  however,  too  late  to  repent  the  decision 
to  print,  and  they  are  here  presented  with  the 
hope  that  they  may  be  of  some  slight  service 
in  helping  to  strengthen  the  good  feeling  and 


388333 


vi  PEEFACE 

sense  of  comradeship  between  the  British  and 
the  American  people. 

As  an  admirer  of  Great  Britain,  I  have  felt 
free  to  speak  quite  openly  and  have  not  allowed 
myself  merely  to  indulge  in  pleasantries  and 
oratorical  adulation.  I  have  referred  without 
reserve  to  the  prejudices  and  misunderstand- 
ings of  the  past,  which  we  hope  are  now  laid 
definitely  aside,  and  I  have  not  shrunk  from 
giving  my  own  opinion  of  Britain's  errors.  If 
I  seem  to  dwell  on  them  too  much,  it  is  because 
I  have  desired  not  to  give  the  appearance  of 
avoiding  disagreeable  truths  or  what,  at  least, 
I  deem  to  be  truths.  It  is  a  privilege  to  speak 
in  a  frank  and  friendly  way  to  a  tolerant  and 
kindly  people. 

The  article  called  the  ^^  Background  of 
American  Federalism"  may  be  of  interest  at 
the  present  time  when  so  many  persons  in  Brit- 
ain are  discussing  federalism,  and  if  correct  in 
its  analysis  of  the  disputes  of  the  American 
Revolution — as  I  am  confident  after  many  years 
of  study  it  is — it  discloses,  not  only  that  the 
old  British  Empire  is  the  source  of  the  central 
principle  of  federalism,  but  also  that  the  politi- 
cal problem  now  holding  the  attention  of  Brit- 
ish students  and  men  of  affairs  is  in  its  es- 
sence of  very  long  standing. 

In  various  places,  I  mention  what  I  believe 


PREFACE  vii 

to  be  the  wholesome  and  beneficent  effect  of 
liberalism.  It  is  doubtless  unnecessary  to  say 
that  I  have  no  party  principles  in  mind  and  no 
party  differences.  I  mean  only  those  general 
sentiments  and  convictions  and  that  faith  and 
confidence  in  the  rights  and  character  of  the 
main  body  of  the  people,  which  constitute  the 
foundation  of  the  British  and  American  poli- 
tical structures,  and  which,  lived  up  to  with 
some  considerable  conscientiousness  in  domestic 
politics,  have  necessarily  affected  imperial  ad- 
ministration and  policy  and  also  created  a  point 
of  view  and  a  fixed  principle  of  guidance  for 
dealing  with  the  perplexities  of  international  re- 
lationships and  responsibilities. 

I  must  acknowledge  my  great  indebtedness  to 
The  Monroe  Doctrine:  an  Interpretation,  by 
Professor  A.  B.  Hart.  The  careful  collection 
of  excerpts  from  state  papers  and  the  writings 
of  American  statesmen  was  of  considerable 
service  to  me  in  the  preparation  of  the  lecture 
on  the  Monroe  Doctrine. 

Andrew  C.  McLaughlin. 

Chicago,  September,  1918. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

America's  Entry  into  the  War     ....  1 

British  and  American  Relations.    Part  I  .  37 

British  and  American  Relations.    Part  II  67 

The  Monroe  Doctrine 97 

The  Background  of  American  Federalism  .  177 


IZ 


TO  THE  MEMORY  OF 

Captain  Rowland  H.  McLaughlin 

Who  gave  his  Life  for  the  Principles 
OF  Justice  and  Honor  among  Nations 

At  the  Meuse 
october  the  fourteenth 

nineteen  HUNDRED  AND   EIGHTEEN 


AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 


I  now  see  that  more  than  patriotism  is  necessary. 

Edith  Cavell. 

You  cannot  be  truly  free,  unless  we  are  free  too ;  for  such  is 
the  nature  of  things,  that  he,  who  entrenches  on  the  liberty  of 
others,  is  the  first  to  lose  his  own  and  become  a  slave. 

John  Milton,  in  The  Second  Defence  of  the  People  of  Eng- 
land, addressing  Cromwell. 

(We  may  invert  the  above  declaration  of  Milton  and  say: 
We  cannot  be  truly  free,  unless  you  are  free  too;  for  such  is 
the  nature  of  things,  that  he,  who  loses  his  own  liberty,  is  the 
first  to  entrench  on  the  liberty  of  others. 

The  message  of  the  Allies  to  Germany.) 

The  destruction  of  Old  England  would  hurt  me.  I  wish  it 
well;    it  afforded   my  ancestors  an   asylum   from  persecution. 

John  Jay  to  Gouvemeur  Morris,  1778. 

"It  is  a  remembrance  of  mine,  now  hard  to  realize,  that  I 
was  brought  up  to  abhor  the  memory  of  George  III. ' '  At  this 
she  smiled  and  answered,  "That  was  very  unjust,  for  I  was 
brought  up  to  adore  the  memory  of  George  Washington. ' ' 

Conversation  between  Andrew  D.  White  and  the  Empress 
Frederick,  the  daughter  of  Queen  Victoria  and  the  great-grand- 
daughter of  George  III.  Reported  in  the  Autobiography  of 
Andrew  D.  White. 


>  »    »      •  • 


r  •'%  - 


AMEEICA^S  ENTRY  INTO  THE  WAR:  AN 
HISTORICAL  STATEMENT ' 

An  audience  of  intelligent  and  well-read  Brit- 
ish people  is  well  aware  of  the  fact  that  America 
long  held  aloof  from  the  complications  of  Euro- 
pean politics,  but  it  is  not  altogether  easy  to 
comprehend  how  remote  were  the  diplomatic 
controversies  of  this  side  of  the  ocean.  Even 
the  intellectual  classes  discussed  such  questions 
seldom,  and  when  the  subject  was  discussed  the 
matter  appeared  distant  and  devoid  of  inmae- 
diate  interest;  it  was  impersonal  and  bookish. 
Only  those  that  had  traveled  in  Europe  had 
much  notion  of  the  tension  existing  on  the  Con- 
tinent, and  only  keen  observers  discovered  that, 
for  it  was  not  to  be  seen  on  a  hurried  holiday 
trip  through  the  art  galleries  of  the  Old  World. 
We  had  little  or  no  knowledge  of  the  ever- 
vexed  Balkans,  and  had  cyclopaedic  ignorance 
of  the  Eastern  question.  Individually  we  may 
have  had  our  sympathies  and  our  mild  antip- 

*A  lecture  delivered  at  University  College,  London,  on  May 
7tli,  1918,  with  the  Rt.  Hon.  A.  J.  Balfour  in  the  chair. 

1 


2  AMEBICA  AND  BRITAIN 

athies,  but  as  a  people  we  were  unsuspicious, 
guileless,  and  unsophisticated.  Some  of  these 
attributes  may  appear  to  be  inapplicable,  for 
you  may  know  that  in  Governmental  matters 
we  have  sometimes  been  sharp,  perhaps  I  should 
say  aggressive,  but,  on  the  whole,  as  a  people 
we  live  in  an  air  of  toleration. 

I  trust  that  the  Italian  historian  was  in  part 
wrong  when  he  contrasted  Europe  with  Amer- 
ica, saying  that  Europe  was  clouded  with  hate 
and  America  brightened  by  friendliness;  but 
I  am  confident  that  we  as  a  nation  were  free 
from  mean  suspicions  and  lived  in  an  atmos- 
phere of  good  nature.  This  good  nature  is  not 
necessarily  temperamental.  We  are  not  good- 
natured  now — we  are  ugly.  Our  good-natured- 
ness  was  in  large  measure  the  product  of  igno- 
rance, of  absorption  in  our  own  affairs,  and  of 
intense  interest  in  the  game  of  business,  in  the 
task  of  social  betterment,  and  in  political  con- 
troversy. Foreign  affairs  touched  us  only 
slightly.  Moreover,  we  were  a  composite  peo- 
ple, priding  ourselves  on  our  capacity  to  ac- 
cept and  to  make  our  own  the  peoples  of  many 
nations.  We  watched,  those  of  us  that  had  in- 
tellectual interest  in  national  development,  the 
steady  stream  of  immigrants  pouring  into  the 
land,  and  though  we  often  had  misgivings  we 


AMERICA  IN  THE  WAR  3 

were  generally  carried  along  by  characteristic 
optimism,  and  by  a  wholesome  faith  in  the 
power  of  American  ideals  to  make  over  the  new- 
comers into  citizens  feeling  and  thinking  as  the 
rest  of  us  did.  Prejudices  and  dislikes  and  sus- 
picions of  alien  peoples  were,  therefore,  for- 
eign to  us ;  we  did  not  reason  about  it,  or  pon- 
der the  problem  particularly,  we  simply  moved 
along  unaware  of  danger  and  without  feeling. 
Many  of  you  will  say  to  yourselves :  *  ^  Much  of 
this  is  also  true  of  Britain ;  we  have  not  nursed 
hatred  or  encouraged  suspicion  of  other  na- 
tions; we,  too,  have  been  friendly  and  open- 
minded.'*  If  you  are  saying  so,  you  are  doubt- 
less speaking  the  truth.  Certainly  in  America 
we  were  quite  unprepared  for  an  appreciation 
of  the  psychology  of  Germany,  for  any  under- 
standing of  that  mean  jealousy,  the  petty  and 
gross  intolerance,  the  suspicions  and  sly  in- 
trigue which  we  have  at  last  come  to  know  so 
well. 

For  a  hundred  years  and  more  America  has 
been  free  from  the  entanglements  of  European 
politics.  We  appeared  to  have  but  one  principle 
of  foreign  politics,  and  that  was  to  mind  our 
own  business  and  to  let  Europe  alone.  Occa- 
sionally we  were  reminded  that  America  had 
become  a  world-power,  but  most  of  us  smiled 


4  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

at  the  expression,  thinking  we  had  been  a  world- 
power  for  a  century  or  more,  and  not  believing 
that  we  were  called  upon  to  abandon  our  old 
policy  of  isolation  or  be  caught  up  in  the  tan- 
gled skein  of  Europe.  We  had  one  fixed  pol- 
icy, the  Monroe  Doctrine,  which  meant  what 
it  might  mean — for  it  was  a  perfect  chameleon 
among  doctrines — ^but,  conveniently  adaptable 
to  exigencies  of  international  affairs  in  the 
Western  hemisphere,  it  was  rigid  in  its  applica- 
tion to  Europe.  America,  for  her  own  safety, 
for  her  own  interest,  was  to  lead  her  own  life, 
and  follow  her  own  courses.  This  policy,  if 
policy  it  may  be  called,  for  it  is,  after  all,  rather 
a  feeling,  a  sentiment,  and  a  tradition  than  a 
policy,  may  appear  to  you  narrow  and  provin- 
cial, the  child  of  selfishness  and  of  ignorance. 
Well,  I  am  not  here  to  defend  or  apologize;  I 
can  only  say  that  conditions  are  much  as  I 
have  described  them ;  and,  again,  you  may  pos- 
sibly say  that  you,  too,  in  the  care  of  your  vast 
Empire,  would  have  been  quite  content  to  be 
left  alone ;  you  would  have  been  more  than  satis- 
fied, most  of  you,  if  you  could  have  believed 
that  you  could  go  on  quite  freely  to  do  your  best 
with  your  own  problems  without  fear  of  mo- 
lestation or  interference  from  some  jealous 
outsider. 


AMERICA  IN  THE  WAR  5 

The  Monroe  Doctrine  is  defended  by  prao- 
tically  all  American  students  of  history  for 
what  it  has  accomplished,  but,  right  or  wrong, 
it  was  popularly  held  and  supported;  it  is  prac- 
tically the  only  policy  of  State  which  we  have 
ever  had,  and  which  through  the  whole  of  our 
national  existence  has  maintained  itself  and 
strangely  persisted  despite  the  developments  of 
modern  history,  despite  the  fact  that  the  ocean 
had  become  a  highway  and  not  a  barrier,  de- 
spite the  strength  of  commercial  and  intellec- 
tual bonds  connecting  us  with  Europe,  despite 
the  growth  of  democracy  over  here  and  the  ex- 
tension of  those  principles  of  popular  govern- 
ment which  at  one  time  we  justly  thought  were 
our  peculiar  possession.  But  deeper,  more  far- 
reaching  than  a  policy  of  State  embalmed  in 
a  phrase  was  the  strength  of  tradition,  our  one 
tradition,  and  deeper  still  a  sentiment,  a  feel- 
ing, an  attitude  of  mind,  a  sense  that  we  were 
to  move  along  fulfilling  as  best  we  might  our 
own  destiny,  and  carrying  our  burdens  as  stead- 
ily as  our  own  strength  permitted. 

To-day  America  is  stirred  as  it  never  has 
been  before;  not  even  in  the  days  of  our  own 
Civil  War,  I  think,  was  feeling  more  intense  or 
thought  more  bitter.  We  know  that  America 
has  been  called  to  its  own,  called  to  give  proof 


6  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

on  the  field  of  battle  that  it  values  honor  and 
liberty  and  truth  and  fair  dealing  more  than 
life.  We  are  not  ignobly  striving  for  profit  or 
territorial  aggrandizement;  we  have  no  hidden 
purpose  in  our  detestation  of  the  forces  which 
have  plunged  the  world  into  the  misery  of  un- 
speakable sorrow  and  desolation.  But  this  I 
must  say — and  I  believe  I  speak  truthfully  and 
with  some  slight  knowledge — ^you  and  I  should 
err  if  we  did  not  see  how  difficult  it  was  to  reach 
the  conviction  that  a  European  struggle  was 
ours  also ;  how  difficult,  how  extremely  difficult, 
to  uproot  those  habits  of  thought  which  I  be- 
lieve I  have  not  described  too  strongly.  No  one 
can  be  sure  how  thoroughly  hereafter  we  shall 
participate  in  world  affairs.  I  know  not  what 
to  say,  or  how  to  express  the  contradictory  im- 
pressions that  come  to  me.  I  am  confident  of 
intense  earnestness,  of  a  profound  feeling  of 
duty,  of  pride  in  the  leadership  of  a  great 
American,  whose  vision  is  wide  and  whose  love 
of  humanity  is  strong.  I  am  confident  of  deep 
and  vivid  sympathy  for  the  unhappy  Belgians 
to  whom  we  have  given  food  and  care  and 
money.  We  have  admiration  for  brave,  sor- 
row-stricken France  and  for  the  quiet,  master- 
ful strength  of  Britain,  by  whose  side  we  gladly 
fight.    But  I  cannot  be  sure  that  we  have  alto- 


AMERICA  IN  THE  WAR  7 

gether  cast  aside  old  supports  or  barriers,  or 
that  we  have  reached  a  stage  where  we  can  think 
internationally.  It  may  be,  we  do  not  know, 
it  may  be  that  the  old  days  of  isolation  are 
gone ;  it  may  be  that  we  are  henceforth  to  play 
a  conspicuous  role  in  the  affairs  of  the  world. 
To  me  that  appears  inevitable.  Isolation  con- 
flicts mth  realities  of  modern  life  too  strongly, 
our  duty  is  too  clear,  your  hopes  for  civilization 
and  peace  are  too  nearly  identical  with  ours, 
the  world  is  too  nearly  one  organic  whole,  the 
needs  of  humanity  are  too  pressing  to  allow  a 
nation  like  America  to  live  its  own  life  heed- 
less and  unmindful  of  responsibility  for  affairs 
beyond  its  borders;  and  so  we  may  expect  in- 
telligent and,  I  hope,  high-minded  and  gener- 
ous participation  of  America  in  world  affairs; 
but  no  one  can  be  sure  just  how  thoroughly  we 
have  cast  aside  our  old  habits. 

From  describing  the  American  attitude  to- 
wards foreign  affairs  before  the  war  I  have 
passed  on  to  a  consideration  of  the  present  and 
the  future,  for  already  the  past  seems  long  past, 
and  the  present  holds  us  in  its  grasp.  I  must 
endeavor,  however,  for  the  time,  at  least,  to 
keep  my  mind  within  those  early  trying  and 
soul-harrowing  years  when  we  were  amazed, 
distracted,  doubtful,  full  of  newly  awakened  in- 


8  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

terest  and  newly  aroused  foreboding,  stirred 
with  sympathy  and  with  hitherto  unfelt  pas- 
sions, groping  amid  new  scenes,  learning  new 
enmities,  finding  that  we  were  in  the  presence 
of  a  dark,  unseemly  force  that  most  of  us  had 
not  dreamed  of,  holding  fast,  over-stubbornly, 
it  may  be,  but  holding  still  to  what  we  were  or 
had  been,  believing  or  trying  to  believe,  or 
struggling  out  of  the  belief,  that  this  war  was 
not  our  war,  turning  over  in  our  minds  the  re- 
sponsibility involved  in  calling  100,000,000 
peaceful  people  to  arms,  obtaining  ourselves 
or  hoping  that  the  man  on  the  street  was  get- 
ting a  wider  outlook  on  the  whole  world  wherein 
he  might  see  that  patriotism  is  not  enough — see 
narrow-souled  patriotism  exalting  its  own  Kul- 
tur  and  beating  down  the  life  and  hope  of  a 
wider  humanity.  From  what  I  have  already 
said  it  will  be  plain  that  a  mental  change  and 
a  sentimental  change  had  to  come  before  this 
wider  outlook  could  be  had;  knowledge  had  to 
be  gathered  and  new  interests  had  to  be  cre- 
ated. 

If  I  have  been  rightly  informed,  British  no- 
tions of  the  American  population  are  in  danger 
of  falling  into  one  of  two  opposite  errors.  On 
the  one  side  is  the  belief  that  we  are  a  British 
people  who  a  hundred  years  or  more  ago  broke 


AMERICA  IN  THE  WAR  9 

away  from  Britain,  and  are  still  in  all  essen- 
tials British  to  the  core.  On  the  other  side  is 
the  belief  that  British  stock  has  been  entirely 
submerged  and  that  the  land  is  filled  with  a 
myriad  of  men  of  different  races  but  slightly 
affected  bv  the  culture  and  mental  habits  of 
the  Mother  Country.  No  one  can  with  perfect 
precision  describe  the  American  people,  cer- 
tainly not  in  a  few  words,  but  it  can  be  said 
with  considerable  positiveness  that  we  are 
neither  one  thing  nor  the  other.  Even  of  the 
eighteenth  century  it  could  truthfully  be  said 
that  not  England  but  Europe  was  the  Mother 
of  America.  The  flood  of  emigrants  that  have 
come  in  the  past  fifty  years  in  constantly  in- 
creasing numbers  has  filled  our  land  with  mil- 
lions of  persons  whose  traditions  are  not  Brit- 
ish. A  considerable  portion  of  these  persons 
have  become  Americanized,  their  children  have 
learned  the  English  language,  and  have  been 
absorbed  into  our  life.  In  1910  the  foreign 
white  stock  amounted  to  about  one-third  of  the 
total  population,  32,000,000  people.  By  foreign 
white  stock  I  mean  persons  born  in  Europe  or 
the  children  of  foreign  born.  Of  these  8,000,000 
were  German,  though  these  figures  do  not  in- 
clude Austrian  Germans;  2,500,000  were  Ger- 
man born.    In  recent  years  there  has  been  an 


10  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

influx  of  Russians,  mostly  Russian  Jews,  and 
also  many  Italians,  with  not  a  few  Greeks.  How 
far  had  these  people,  even  those  that  had  been 
in  the  land  a  decade  or  two,  been  actually  ab- 
sorbed? I  cannot  answer,  but  there  are  one 
or  two  things  I  can  say  with  some  assurance. 
Most  of  these  people  were  proud  of  American 
citizenship,  most  of  them  felt  that  they  had  cast 
the  past  aside,  many  of  them  showed  an  appre- 
ciation for  the  elemental  ideals  of  American 
life.  And  this  leads  me  to  a  consideration  of 
the  other  belief  that  some  of  you  may  hold,  that 
this  flood  has  submerged  the  old  British  stock. 
Here,  again,  the  whole  truth  is  illusive,  but  the 
main  outstanding  fact  is,  in  my  judgment,  the 
astonishing  vigor  of  Anglo-Saxon  life.  Noth- 
ing is  to  me,  as  I  study  American  history  and 
American  conditions,  more  impressive  than  the 
force  of  the  essentials  of  Anglo-American  civil- 
ization. The  influences  of  language,  of  litera- 
ture, of  law  have  exerted  and  will  continue  to 
exert  steady  pressure,  and  the  resulting  civil- 
ization will  be  largely  identical  with  your  own. 
After  all,  there  is  something  compelling  in  the 
principles  of  individual  liberty,  in  those  prin- 
ciples of  political  thought  and  action  which 
America  inherited  from  Britain. 
We  have  no  conscious  desire  to  counteract  the 


AMERICA  IN  THE  WAR  11 

qualities  brought  to  our  shores  by  the  men  from 
the  European  Continent.  When  in  the  past  we 
have  spoken  of  the  immigration  problem,  and 
realized  the  difficulties,  we  have  not  said :  ^ '  Can 
these  people  be  inoculated  with  the  qualities  of 
Anglo-Saxonism,  can  they  be  brought  under  the 
sway  of  the  old  British  stock!'*  We  have  said: 
^^Can  we  be  sure  that  these  people  will  become 
American,  patriotic,  and  law-abiding!  Will 
they  accept  what,  even  in  these  latter  days,  w^e 
call  the  ideals  of  American  citizenship!'*  And 
it  must  be  remembered  that  one  of  those  ideals 
was  hospitality,  opportunity  for  the  man  of  the 
Old  World  to  start  over  again  on  our  shores, 
and  to  go  on  and  up  with  us.  We  have  had  no 
desire,  and  we  have  now  no  desire,  to  influence 
these  people  to  any  fixed  standards  of  racial 
life. 

I  am  discussing  this  subject  only  to  show  you 
certain  elementary  factors  in  a  complicated 
situation.  My  intention  is  not  to  impugn  the 
patriotism  or  the  civic  virtues  of  the  recent  im- 
migrants ;  but  it  must  be  plain  that  among  them 
sympathy  for  Britain  would  play  no  part,  there 
would  be  no  instinctive  response  to  the  needs  of 
any  foreign  country,  save  the  one  or  the  other 
with  which  they  were  racially  connected,  and 
perhaps  not  with  that.    Many  of  these  persons 


12  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

left  the  Old  World  to  escape  its  military  bur- 
dens. My  object,  let  me  repeat,  is  not  to  com- 
plain of  the  attitude  of  these  millions,  nor,  on 
the  other  hand,  to  praise  or  defend  them.  To 
me  the  striking  fact  is  this,  that  the  vast  ma- 
jority were  prepared,  when  the  time  came,  to 
follow  the  flag  of  the  United  States,  quietly  to 
take  up  the  load  of  war,  and  to  walk  forward 
with  no  other  thought  than  patriotic  devotion 
to  the  country  of  their  adoption  and  the  prin- 
ciples which  they  knew  you  as  well  as  we  were 
fighting  for. 

There  is  one  other  thought  which  I  must  of- 
fer, a  simple  one,  but  of  real  significance.  The 
war  was  far  away.  I  have  emphasized  our  de- 
tachment and  our  seclusion  from  the  political 
affairs  of  Europe,  but  I  am  speaking  now  only 
of  the  difficulty  with  which  incidents  are  made 
real  by  the  imagination,  if  those  incidents  are 
three  or  four  thousand  miles  distant.  You  will 
say,  perchance,  that  distance  did  not  cloud  the 
mind  of  the  Australian  or  the  South  African. 
All  the  more  honor  to  them.  But,  again,  and 
I  speak  solely  of  facts  as  I  see  them,  it  was  hard, 
very  hard,  for  the  average  man  in  a  prairie 
town  of  the  Mississippi  Valley  to  feel  the  ac- 
tuality of  the  stories  told  him  in  his  weekly 
paper.    Such  men  as  I  have  in  mind  are  not  un- 


AMERICA  IN  THE  WAR  13 

intelligent,  they  are  not  hopelessly  narrow  and 
dull.  But  they  did  not  instinctively  realize  that 
this  was  their  war.  The  reason  will  be  given 
by  any  tyro  in  psychology:  the  war  lacked  im- 
mediateness. 

If  any  considerable  portion  of  what  I  have 
said  is  true,  then  time  was  necessary  to  awaken 
new  ideas  and  to  get  new  points  of  view.  Pas- 
sions, I  know,  for  which  there  has  been  emo- 
tional preparation,  can  quickly  sweep  across  the 
Continent,  but,  while  we  are  a  sensitive  people, 
and  react  quickly  to  certain  elements,  it  is  just 
impossible  for  a  wave  of  impulse  to  pass  from 
one  side  of  the  land  to  the  other,  unless  by  our 
previous  history  the  brain-tracts  have  been  de- 
veloped through  thought  and  experience.  Of 
course,  that  is  true  of  all  peoples.  The  Ger- 
mans flew  to  arms,  flung  themselves  into  war, 
because  their  minds  had  been  dwelling  on  war, 
and  because  of  the  psychological  effects  of  mili- 
tarism. But  America  was  in  its  essence  a  coun- 
try of  peace;  men's  minds  needed  to  be 
wrenched  from  their  moorings,  or  shunted  on 
to  new  lines  altogether,  before  they  could  even 
conceive  of  the  barbarity  of  war. 

Our  population  also  lacked  homogeneity,  and 
you  cannot  by  a  single  spark  send  a  fiie  of  pas- 
sion through  100,000,000  men  not  in  psychologi- 


14  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

cal  contact.  Plainly,  then,  the  American  people 
required  time  to  learn,  time  to  become  homo- 
geneous in  their  attitude  towards  the  great 
question  of  the  war.  I  am  not  contending 
that  we  ought  not  to  have  gone  to  war  earlier; 
I  am  trying  to  be  detached,  unargumentative. 

If  you  still  ask  why  the  common  man  did  not 
more  quickly  grasp  the  complexities  of  the  Eu- 
ropean conflict,  I  ask  you  in  turn  to  let  your 
mind  wander  from  New  York,  with  its  million 
of  foreign-born  citizens,  its  great  wealth,  and 
its  vast  material  splendor,  prosperity,  and  pov- 
erty, onward  across  the  Continent,  over  the 
Appalachians,  across  the  prairies  dotted  with 
innumerable  farmhouses  and  villages  and  popu- 
lous to^vns,  onwards  to  California  and  the  Pa- 
cific, three  thousand  miles  away,  or  down 
through  the  cotton-raising  South  and  up  to  the 
wheat  regions  of  Minnesota  and  the  Dakotas, 
then  over  the  iron  and  copper  regions  of  Michi- 
gan. Face  the  difficulty  of  actually  reproducing 
in  your  own  mind  the  conditions  of  life,  the 
spirit  and  the  temper  of  that  vast  region,  and 
if  you  do,  you  will  appreciate  the  task  we  had 
in  visualizing  Europe,  and  you  will  possibly  be 
astonished,  as  I  sometimes  am,  not  that  we 
moved  slowly,  but  that  finally,  little  by  little, 
step  by  step,  we  came  to  feel  as  a  nation  and 


AMERICA  IN  THE  WAR  15 

as  a  single  whole  to  see  the  thing  in  all  its  naked 
and  vulgar  ugliness,  this  thing  with  which  we 
had  to  fight,  in  defense  of  civilization,  and  the 
elementary  principles  of  decency  and  manly  jus- 
tice. 

What  were  the  American  sympathies  in  the 
earlier  months  of  the  war?  You  can  probably 
answer  that  yourselves.  In  many  quarters 
there  was  intuition  and  instantaneous  sympathy 
for  the  Allied  cause.  Many  of  us,  ignorant  as 
we  were,  had  learned  something  of  German  mili- 
tary ambition.  Some  of  us  had  knowledge  of 
German  arrogance.  Some  of  us  realized  that 
a  War  Lord  reigned  in  Berlin,  and  we  had  long 
believed  that  his  great  military  establishment 
menaced  the  peace  of  Europe.  Such  persons  re- 
acted to  the  side  of  Britain  and  France  almost 
at  the  very  beginning — strongly,  as  soon  as  they 
saw  the  facts — but  I  venture  to  say  that  if  there 
was  hesitation  in  reaching  definite  conclusions 
no  one  who  has  read  the  history  of  modern 
diplomacy  will  altogether  blame  the  hesitant. 
But  soon  came  the  British  Blue  Book,  with  the 
dispatches  of  your  Foreign  Office ;  the  thing  we 
wanted  to  know  was:  Who  began  this  war? 
We  wanted  to  know  authoritatively,  documen- 
tarily,  unequivocally — and  we  found  out.  We 
discovered  the  truth  we  were  seeking,  in  part 


16  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

from  the  British  Blue  Book ;  and  its  revelations 
were  considerately  confirmed  by  the  German 
White  Book.  This  German  volume  is  the  most 
important  document  of  the  war ;  a  revelation  of 
military  arrogance,  of  haughty  intolerance.  It 
was  convincing  even  more  by  what  it  omitted 
than  by  what  it  contained ;  for  if  the  old  adage 
was  ever  true  it  was  true  of  this  particular 
volume.  The  suppression  of  the  truth  is  the 
confession  of  falsehood. 

What  I  am  now  saying  must  appear  to  you 
like  lines  from  ancient  history,  and  for  that 
matter  so  does  it  to  me.  But  I  need  to  recall 
for  historical  accuracy  the  painful  interest  with 
which  we  turned  the  leaves  of  the  Blue  and 
White  and  Gray  Books  as  they  came  to  hand, 
and  how  those  of  us  having  access  to  their  pages 
were  enlightened  in  our  sympathies  and  steeled 
in  our  repugnance  to  the  methods  of  autocratic 
militarism.  The  story  of  the  scrap  of  paper 
set  America  to  thinking  hard.  Never  did  the 
carrying  power  of  a  phrase  more  clearly  mani- 
fest itself.  Then  for  some  months  we  studied 
and  discussed  the  invasion  of  Belgium,  and  be- 
gan to  gather  in  the  tales  of  German  atrocities, 
at  first  with  incredulity,  but  with  steadily  grow- 
ing amazement  and  indignation.  Doubtless  you 
passed  through  the  same  mental  experiences 


AMERICA  IN  THE  WAR  17 

yourselves.  Can  one  be  ashamed  of  his  unwil- 
lingness to  believe  that  a  nation  calling  itself 
civilized  could  be  guilty  of  the  cruelty  practised 
by  the  German  Army  in  Belgium?  In  our  case, 
as  perhaps  in  yours,  it  was  only  after  the  pub- 
lication of  the  Bryce  Report  with  the  accom- 
panying documents  that  we  saw  the  reality  and 
believed  the  unbelievable.  We  discovered,  then, 
what  militarism  meant  in  its  final  qualities — 
militarism  which  inculcated  devastation  and 
terrorism  as  a  portion  of  definite  military  pol- 
icy. Belgium  settled  the  sympathies  of  the 
great  mass  of  the  people  of  America.  We  saw 
the  whole  horrible  thing  was  premeditated, 
planned  with  cold,  calculating,  repulsive  Ger- 
man efiiciency.  We  realized  that  mobilization 
plans  are  not  formed  in  a  moment,  or  strategic 
railways  laid  down  in  a  night ;  we  realized  that 
RealpolitiJc — the  very  word  a  reproach — in- 
cluded deceit  as  well  as  barbarity.  Even  in 
these  days  of  misgiving  and  distress  we  may 
take  some  comfort  possibly  in  believing  that  in- 
ternational bullying,  MacJitpolitik,  was  shat- 
tered when  it  shocked  the  conscience  of  the 
world.  John  Bright,  I  believe  it  was,  said  that 
the  only  value  of  war  is  to  teach  geography; 
but  this  war  taught  a  language.  We  learned 
what  SchrecMicJikeit  means ;  and  we  discovered 


18  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

that  terrorism  is  involved  in  the  whole  philoso- 
phy of  war  when  it  is  carried  out  with  relent- 
less thoroughness  and  with  logical  disregard  for 
the  ordinary  promptings  of  compassion. 

German  propagandists  early  began  to  culti- 
vate American  opinion.  I  do  not  know  what 
effect  missionaries  of  Kultur  like  Herr  Dern- 
burg  made  on  the  popular  mind.  On  the  whole 
I  imagine  Herr  Dernburg  himself  believes  to- 
day that  he  did  more  harm  than  good.  Cer- 
tainly more  harm  if  he  succeeded  in  arousing 
the  passion  and  increasing  the  prejudices  of 
German- Americans,  and  certainly  harm  for  the 
German  cause  if  he  awakened  resentment  in  the 
hearts  of  such  simple-minded  Americans  as  were 
aware  of  his  purposes.  The  great  body  of  the 
American  people  were  not  hoodwinked  by  the 
German  propagandists.  A  famous  American 
said  early  in  the  war  that  he  had  been  asked 
by  British  friends  whether  it  would  be  well  to 
send  material  to  America  to  win  the  people  to 
the  cause  of  the  Allies,  and  he  replied:  *^I  do 
not  think  it  is  at  all  necessary,  the  American 
people  at  large  have  a  good  deal  of  sense,  when 
all  is  said,  and,  if  their  good  sense  fails,  the 
German  Ambassador  will  help  them  to  appre- 
ciate the  rectitude  of  the  Allied  position.'' 

The  attempts  of  German  propagandists  to 


AMERICA  IN  THE  WAR  19 

justify  the  invasion  showed  an  astonishing  in- 
ability or  unwillingness  to  make  frank  use  of 
public  documentary  material.  Documents  found 
in  the  Belgian  archives  showed  that  some  years 
ago  an  English  military  officer  and  a  Belgian 
official  had  consulted  together  as  to  what  steps 
England  should  take  in  case  Germany  invaded 
Belgium.  After  Germany  had  done  the  very 
thing  which  England  and  Belgium  had  feared, 
German  propagandists  tried  to  justify  her  by 
declaring  that  Belgium  was  considering  means 
of  preventing  it.  The  use  made  of  the  docu- 
ments actually  affronted  our  intelligence  and 
added  to  our  distrust. 

You  are  about  to  ask  me  why  America  did 
not  plunge  into  the  war  or  immediately  prepare 
for  the  conflict,  just  as  soon  as  the  enormity  of 
Prussian  deceit  and  cruelty  was  realized. 
Again,  I  cannot  tell  you,  and  again  I  refrain 
from  speaking  apologetically  or  in  condemna- 
tion. I  can  only  say  that  a  very  few,  a  very 
limited  number,  in  my  judgment,  believed  by 
the  early  spring  of  1915  that  this  war  was  our 
war  in  the  sense  that  we  should  enter.  After 
all,  did  a  nation  ever  before  in  the  world's  his- 
tory enter  a  conflict  only  because  it  loathed 
the  principles  and  despised  the  conduct  of  an- 
other nation,  solely  because  of  moral  indigna- 


20  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

tion,  or  have  nations  been  led  into  war  by  min- 
isters or  rulers,  or  for  some  evident  material 
gain?  My  historical  information  may  be  insuf- 
ficient, but,  as  I  see  it,  the  nearest  approach  to 
such  altruistic  conduct  was  when  you  yourselves 
entered  this  war  and  sent  over  your  famous 
little  army  to  win  imperishable  glory  and  to  die 
on  the  field  of  honor  at  Mons.  Pray  do  not 
accuse  me  of  dealing  in  smart  retort.  You  are 
no  stronger  defender  of  British  honor,  cour- 
age, and  high-mindedness  than  I  am.  I  claim 
at  such  a  time  as  this  and  in  this  presence  no 
indulgence  as  an  ignorant  outsider.  But  am  I 
not  right  in  thinking  that  your  interests  in  some 
respects  coincided  or  appeared  to  coincide  with 
duty  and  your  honor?  If  you  answer  no,  that 
you  offered  all  for  humanity,  I  shall  not  deny 
you.  I  am  not  wrong,  however,  I  think,  in  at- 
tributing to  Mr.  Balfour  himself  the  remark, 
when  we  did  enter  the  war,  that  it  was  the  most 
magnanimous  and  generous  act  in  history. 

May  I  give  one  more  answer  to  why  we  did 
not  enter  the  war  as  soon  as  Machtpolitik  was 
revealed  in  all  its  hideousness — an  answer,  I 
mean,  not  already  suggested  by  the  earlier  por- 
tions of  my  remarks  in  which  I  attempted  to 
portray  American  psychological  condition? 
The  answer  is  this :  a  great  many  persons  were 


AMERICA  IN  THE  WAR  21 

strengthened  in  their  antipathy  to  war.  In- 
stead of  making  men  more  warlike  the  struggle 
in  Europe  made  them  more  determined  to  keep 
the  peace.  We  clung  to  an  ideal  not  totally  fool- 
ish, though  time  proved  it  to  be  vain.  We  be- 
lieved that  the  stricken  world  might  actually 
be  benefited  if  one  great  nation  should  keep  out 
of  the  struggle.  We  thought,  not  stupidly, 
though  wrongly,  that  the  spectacle  of  a  nation's 
standing  almost  unarmed  and  totally  unafraid 
might  be  of  some  service  in  ushering  in  the  day 
of  peace  and  of  reconciliation. 

Of  one  thing  I  can  speak  with  much  con- 
fidence— and  in  such  a  complicated  matter  it  is 
comforting  to  have  one  sure  piece  of  solid 
ground  to  stand  upon — the  financial  gain  from 
neutrality  entered  into  our  calculations  not  w^ith 
the  weight  of  a  farthing.  Profits  from  muni- 
tion-making or  from  trade  influenced  the  gen- 
eral sense  of  the  country  not  one  iota.  At  no 
time  did  we  measure  our  duty  or  our  interest  in 
dollars  and  cents  or  scan  with  mean  avidity 
the  pages  of  our  ledgers.  Occasionally,  it  is 
true,  one  heard  of  the  advantages  offered  by 
the  war  for  increasing  our  trade  with  South 
A'merica;  but  here  again  in  no  appreciable  de- 
gree did  this  enter  into  our  calculations  or  sear 
our  consciences. 


22  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

Shall  I  say  a  word  about  the  Lusitania,  about 
that  shameful,  premeditated,  advertised,  and 
dastardly  crime?  It  is  difficult  even  now  to 
speak  about  it  with  calmness,  and  there  is  no 
reason  why  one  should.  You  know,  of  course, 
of  President  Wilson's  messages,  and  you  know 
that  here  and  in  America  as  well  there  was 
some  sharp  criticism  because  he  did  not  follow 
his  words  with  immediate  and  energetic  action. 
There  are  many  to-day  who  believe  that,  if  he 
had  then  spoken  the  word,  America  would  have 
sprung  to  arms,  that  the  masses  of  the  people 
were  waiting  for  the  word.  Well,  who  can  tell? 
I  think  myself  that  even  then,  in  the  spring  of 
1915,  the  people  were  not  ready.  Some  believed, 
or  strove  to  believe,  that  we  had  no  right  to 
furnish  munitions  to  the  Allies ;  many  had  not 
yet  fully  realized  the  enormity  of  Germany's 
criminality.  Only,  I  repeat,  only  by  a  partial 
understanding  of  the  America  I  have  sought 
to  describe  to  you  can  one  see  the  difficulty  of 
arousing  the  people  to  war.  America  is  a  demo- 
cratic country ;  the  people  do  not  blindly  follow 
leadership  or  accept  opinions  from  others.  If 
the  President  had  taken  a  false  step,  he  would 
have  lost  his  powers  of  guidance,  and,  more- 
over, though  many  were  bitter  and  all  were  un- 
happy, the  masses  of  sensible,  sober  people,  un- 


AMERICA  IN  THE  WAR  23 

learned  in  matters  of  international  law,  did  not 
readily  see  how  totally  illegal  and  totally  bru- 
tal was  the  attack  on  unotf ending  travelers  and 
noncombatants.  Moreover — and  here  is  the 
most  crucial  but  more  illusive  and  intangible 
thing — the  nation,  in  its  very  reluctance  to  act, 
in  its  readiness  to  wait,  in  its  willingness  to  ac- 
cept at^ront  and  injury,  showed  certain  quali- 
ties of  intelligent  patience,  a  certain  obstinate 
love  of  peace,  a  certain  over-indulgence  in  the 
desire  to  be  fair-minded.  It  was  one  of  those 
maddening  and  inhibiting  contradictions  such  as 
illuminate  and  darken  the  course  of  history — 
idealism  and  rectitude  of  purpose  standing  in 
some  measure  in  their  own  light. 

All  through  those  years  we  hoped,  as  probably 
the  President  did,  that  we  could  save  the  shat- 
tered fabric  of  international  law  by  protest  and 
expostulation.  That  appeared  the  chiefest  duty 
of  a  neutral  nation ;  that  duty  might  justify  the 
retention  of  neutrality  even  when  we  ourselves 
were  suffering  injury  at  the  hands  of  the  bel- 
ligerents. That  duty  possibly  justified  even  our 
complaints  of  the  British  blockade,  which,  I 
think  it  must  be  confessed,  constituted  at  least 
an  unexpected  expansion  of  the  legal  privileges 
of  a  belligerent.  Of  course,  as  we  now  see, 
words  could  have  no  effect  on  a  German  Gov- 


24  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

ernment  bent  on  beating  down  all  opposition 
and  on  setting  up  its  appetite  as  the  central 
principle  of  international  law ;  but  I  cannot  help 
thinking  there  was  at  least  some  evidence  of 
character  and  considerable  right-mindedness  in 
our  hope  that  argument  and  stern  rebuke  would 
save  something  from  the  wreckage. 

After  the  Sussex  affair,  in  the  summer  of 
1916,  our  relations  with  the  German  Govern- 
ment were  again  greatly  strained,  but  President 
Wilson  succeeded  in  getting  a  promise  that  mer- 
chantmen should  not  be  sunk  without  warning 
and  without  saving  lives,  unless  the  vessel 
should  resist  or  attempt  to  escape.  This  prom- 
ise was  coupled  with  a  condition  that  we  should 
compel  Great  Britain  to  surrender  what  Berlin 
asserted  to  be  an  illegal  blockade.  Remember- 
ing, possibly,  the  net  into  which  Napoleon  en- 
ticed James  Madison  about  107  years  ago,  our 
Government  did  not  accept  the  condition,  but 
warned  Germany  that  her  obligations  were  **  in- 
dividual, not  joint,  absolute,  and  not  relative. '* 
We  rested  easier;  but  we  now  realize  that  this 
willingness  to  forego  the  sinking  of  peaceful 
vessels  and  the  taking  of  lives  can  be  accounted 
for  by  the  fact  that  the  old  U-boats  were  being 
destroyed  and  the  Teutonic  Powers  did  not  then 
have  in  readiness  the  large  and  improved  mon- 


AMERICA  IN  THE  WAR  25 

sters  of  the  deep  with,  which  to  carry  on  the 
work  of  destruction.  Conditions  were  bad 
enough  during  the  later  half  of  1916,  but  with 
the  beginning  of  the  new  year  ruthless  warfare 
was  openly  and  brazenly  instituted.  With  the 
announcement  that  no  warning  would  be  given 
when  ships  were  sunk  within  a  war  zone  (1917), 
cutting  off  nearly  the  whole  coast  of  Western 
Europe,  President  Wilson  sent  the  German  Am- 
bassador home,  and  war  seemed  inevitable. 
One  of  the  astounding  revelations  of  the  poli- 
tical methods  of  the  German  Foreign  Office  was 
the  announcement,  made  by  the  Chancellor  to 
the  Reichstag  and  the  German  people,  that 
President  Wilson  had  broken  off  diplomatic  re- 
lations abruptly,  although  the  step  was  taken 
eighteen  months  or  more  after  the  exchange  of 
dispatches  on  the  Lusitania  crime,  and  half  a 
year  after  the  exchange  of  notes  about  the 
Sussex. 

Why  did  President  Wilson,  after  long  effort 
to  maintain  neutrality  and  even  to  hasten  the 
coming  of  peace,  finally  advocate  war?  Before 
attempting  to  answer  this  question  let  us  recall 
the  President's  efforts  to  bring  the  conflicting 
nations  to  a  statement  of  their  terms,  and  to 
hold  out  to  the  world  the  conception  of  the  es- 
tablishment of  permanent  peace.     The  Presi- 


26  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

dent's  message  on  this  subject  came  out  almost 
simultaneously  with  Germany's  proposal  in 
which  she  suggested  peace  on  the  basis  of  an  as- 
sumed victory  for  her  army.  Such  a  peace  the 
Allied  nations  could  not  accept  without  accept- 
ing militarism,  without  losing  the  all-important 
objects  for  which  millions  of  men  had  already 
given  their  lives;  and  probably  most  of  us  in 
America  believed  that  such  proposals  were  put 
forth  chiefly  to  make  the  German  people  think 
that  the  Allies  were  the  aggressors,  and  must 
bear  the  odium  of  further  conflict.  When  the 
President  called  on  the  warring  nations  to  state 
their  terms,  possibly  he  still  cherished  the  hope 
that,  if  terms  were  frankly  stated,  negotiations 
might  actually  be  begun ;  almost  certainly  he  de- 
sired such  open  statement  as  would  show  to 
the  world  at  large  the  real  essence  of  the  con- 
flict, and  also  show  that  we  were  not  ready  to 
enter  the  struggle  until  we  had  made  every 
possible  effort  to  bring  peace.  The  President's 
appeal  produced  no  very  tangible  results,  al- 
though the  Allied  Powers  stated  their  desires 
and  purposes  with  considerable  definiteness, 
and  these  terms  did  not  appear  to  us  unreason- 
able or  unworthy. 

Throughout  this  time  the  President  and  all 
thinking  Americans  were  interested  chiefly  in 


AMERICA  IN  THE  WAR  27 

the  maintenance  of  civilization,  and  they  looked 
forward  not  merely  to  victory  or  to  the  acquisi- 
tion of  territory  by  one  or  another  nation,  but 
to  the  foundation  of  a  lasting  peace  by  the  estab- 
lishment of  principles  of  justice  and  reason. 
We  found  that  we  could  not  paint  in  too  dark 
colors  the  future  of  the  world  if  we  are  all  to 
remain  under  the  pall  of  fear  and  suspicion, 
and  under  the  overwhelming  burden  of  arma- 
ment; and  thus  we  came  to  see  that  without 
America's  entrance  into  this  war  there  was  lit- 
tle hope  for  relief  from  the  crushing  weight  of 
war  and  the  almost  equally  burdensome  weight 
of  ever-increasing  armed  preparation.  Never, 
it  appeared,  in  the  long  history  of  mankind  was 
there  such  a  fearful  alternative,  never  a  louder 
call  to  duty.  America,  without  the  hope  of 
profit,  with  no  mean  or  hidden  purpose,  must 
herself  fight  to  maintain  the  principles  of  civil- 
ization and  for  the  hope  of  lasting  peace  and 
propriety  between  nations. 

Many  of  us  came  to  realize  the  incredible 
fact  that  Germany  menaced  our  safety,  that  if 
the  war  lords  of  Prussia  were  successful  we 
were  in  actual  and  immediate  danger.  I  know 
nothing  more  magnificent  and  imperial  in  its 
effrontery  than  the  remark  made  by  the  Kaiser 
to  the  American  Ambassador  that  he  would 


28  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

stand  no  more  nonsense  from  America  after  this 
war!  Still,  we  could  scarcely  credit  what  ap- 
pears to  be  the  truth,  that — if  I  may  attribute 
to  the  Kaiser  the  offensive  words  of  Napoleon 
— America  was  within  the  scope  of  his  policy. 
Possibly  it  was  shameful  in  us  to  wait  and  to 
rely  on  the  Allied  Powers  when  we  began  to 
feel  that  their  defeat  imperiled  our  own  safety. 
But  something  more  than  fear  was  needed  to 
force  us  into  the  fight ;  not  until  the  issues  were 
clear  to  the  nations  of  the  world,  not  until  there 
was  hope  for  a  constructive  peace,  not  till  we 
heard  the  call  of  humanity,  were  we  prepared 
to  fling  in  our  power  and  resources. 

Doubtless  our  final  entrance  into  the  conflict 
was  brought  about  by  cumulative  irritation  at 
German  methods  and  policies.  Our  conviction 
of  their  unworthiness  grew  gradually  day  by 
day.  This  conviction  was  the  result  of  experi- 
ence, of  having  actually  lived  through  a  great 
crisis.  Among  these  irritations,  which  opened 
our  eyes  and  hardened  our  hearts,  none  was 
more  powerful  than  the  machinations  of  the 
German  spies.  We  were  more  than  irritated, 
we  were  enlightened ;  we  discovered  what  Welt- 
politik  and  Realpolitik  really  were — German 
espionage  helped  us  to  grasp  the  nature  of  a 
principle    which    is    essentially    criminal    and 


AMERICA  IN  THE  WAR  29 

which,  if  it  continues,  must  make  decent  interna- 
tional relationships  quite  impossible.  And  so 
this  fact  began  to  stand  out  strongly :  Democ- 
racy cannot  survive  in  an  atmosphere  of  inde- 
cent intrigue — Democracy  is  comparatively 
helpless  in  a  game  of  secret  skill  and  of  stealthy 
manipulation. 

America  came  to  see,  by  April,  1917,  that  she 
must  enter  the  struggle,  and  sacrifice,  if  need 
be,  all  but  honor  to  put  down  arrogant  militar- 
ism and  strutting  autocracy,  the  remnants  of 
an  outworn  practice  of  life  and  mode  of  thought. 
The  world  was  too  small  to  contain  two  funda- 
mentally hostile  principles  of  life.  It  took  the 
devastation  of  this  horrible  calamity,  the  death 
of  millions,  the  crippling  of  tens  of  millions,  the 
semi-starvation  of  a  continent,  the  drowning  of 
our  own  people,  the  slimy  intrigue  in  our  own 
nation,  the  practice  of  studied  cruelty  in  Bel- 
gium and  Poland — it  needed  all  this  to  open  our 
blind  eyes;  but  at  last  we  saw.  There  was  no 
use  in  arguing  about  it;  the  world  was  too  small, 
too  organically  united;  it  could  not  encompass 
two  warring  principles  of  life — warring,  that 
is  to  say,  and  deadly  in  their  antagonisms  even 
in  times  of  so-called  peace ;  for  the  deadliest  of 
enemies  are  ideas  and  ideals  that  in,  of,  and 
through    themselves    lead    to    differing   goals. 


30  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

There  was  no  use  in  talking  about  it ;  the  world 
cannot  permanently  exist  or  longer  live  half 
slave  and  half  free.  We  have  to  make  the  world 
safe  for  Democracy. 

President  Wilson  has  not,  as  some  people 
think,  asserted  that  Prussia  must  adopt  a  demo- 
cratic Government.  He  has  simply  said  that 
German  rulers  cannot  be  trusted ;  any  arrange- 
ment with  them  for  peace,  unbacked  by  the  peo- 
ple of  Germany,  would  be  a  bauble.  Does  any- 
body doubt  that  the  German  Government  is  not 
trusted  I  The  question  is  not  whether  it  ought 
to  be  trusted ;  as  to  that,  some  ignorant  person 
might  break  into  an  argument.  The  question 
is  not  whether  we  may  ultimately  have  to  sign 
a  peace  with  the  gilded  and  brazen  rulers  of 
Germany ;  on  that  point  some  faint-hearted  per- 
son might  start  a  discussion.  The  question  is : 
Does  anybody  trust  the  Government?  The 
President  has  also  pointed  out  that  a  peace 
which  is  really  vital  must  be  a  peace  of  peoples. 
Anybody  doubting  that  has  not  got  very  far 
into  the  meaning  of  this  horrible  catastrophe. 
We  are  not,  let  us  hope,  giving  up  the  lives  of 
our  boys  for  a  **peace^*  hanging  on  the  shaky 
word  of  a  Berlin  Government.  And  nothing 
but  the  righteous  sense  and  serene  judgment  of 
everyday  people  who  have  seen  light  and  love 


AMERICA  IN  THE  WAR  31 

the  sunshine  of  friendliness — nothing  else  can 
give  ns  hope  for  humanity. 

And  this  leads  me  to  say,  what  you  will  know, 
that  the  whole  fate  of  democracy  is  involved 
in  this  war,  and  that  out  of  it,  to  use  the  words 
of  Lincoln,  must  come  a  new  birth  of  freedom. 
It  is  not  merely  that  the  hosts  of  Germany  have 
turned  under  regal  leadership  against  the  demo- 
cratic nations  of  the  West  and  hoped  to  crush 
them  by  weight  of  arms  and  barbaric  fury.  It 
is  not  alone  our  territorial  integrity  or  even 
our  forms  of  government  which  are  imperiled ; 
the  spirit  and  breadth  of  open-minded,  cheerful, 
hopeful  and  trustful  democracy  are  in  danger. 
Democracy  is  and  must  be  sociable,  friendly, 
and  helpful,  or  it  belies  its  own  character  and 
denies  its  own  philosophy.  It  cannot  breathe 
the  fetid  air  of  intrigue,  espionage,  and  hidden 
malice.  Democracy  is  built  on  faith,  faith  in  the 
elementary  rectitude,  the  substantial  validity 
of  human  life  and  purposes.  If  it  is  not  trust- 
ful and  open-hearted  and  hopeful  it  falsifies 
its  own  being.  The  time  has  come  when  once 
for  all  it  must  be  decided  on  which  philosophy 
of  life  humanity  will  rest. 

In  all  its  aspects  democracy  is  purely  a  mat- 
ter of  human  relations.  The  time  was  when 
we  thought  only  of  individual  freedom  or  of 


32  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

social  and  political  equality.  But  by  processes 
of  natural  inevitable  growth  we  have  passed  on 
to  a  fuller  relation  of  democratic  obligation. 
Democracy  involves  helpfulness  and  friendly 
companionship;  there  can  be  no  such  thing  as 
an  insulated  democratic  individual,  and  there 
can  be  no  such  thing  as  an  insulated  democratic 
nation;  the  spirit  of  companionableness  and  co- 
operation must  express  itself  in  international 
relations  and  manifest  itself  in  ordinary  inter- 
course between  governments  and  people.  That 
we  shall  always  act  in  highest  accord  with  the 
essential  ideals  of  this  philosophy  of  life  one 
dare  not  prophesy;  but  such,  I  maintain,  is  the 
logical  and  necessary  product  of  a  developing 
spirit.  Democracy  is  in  its  essence  essentially 
human,  not  merely  political  or  governmental; 
and  the  inmost  significance  of  this  struggle  con- 
sists in  this :  we  are  menaced  by  a  force  and  a 
philosophy  hideously  at  variance  with  the  pri- 
mary and  heartfelt  instincts  of  democratic  life. 
This  very  force  has  compelled  democracy  to 
expand  itself  beyond  the  confines  of  national 
boundaries,  and  to  demand  the  recognition  of 
its  principles  as  the  foundation  of  peace  and  of 
a  hopeful  progressive  human  and  humane 
world-order. 

The  passing  years  have  shown,  then,  that  self- 


AMERICA  IN  THE  WAR  33 

contained,  purely  national  democracy  is  not 
enough.  We  cannot  be  inwardly  democratic, 
outwardly  autocratic.  We  may  not  demand  that 
Prussia  adopt  the  forms  of  popular  govern- 
ment— though  these  must  come  to  her,  unless 
she  stand  aside  free  from  the  currents  of  mod- 
ern civilization — but  we  can  and  will  demand 
that  she  abide  by  the  code  of  democratic  fair- 
play  and  fair-mindedness.  If  she  is  unable  or 
unwilling  to  think  as  the  outside  world  is  think- 
ing, she  must  be  made  incompetent.  The  dis- 
tinguished gentleman  who  so  kindly  introduced 
me  this  evening  used  these  words  some  months 
ago:  ** Prussia  must  be  powerless  or  free."  It 
would  be  sheerest  folly  now  not  to  see  the  whole 
fact  clearly.  The  world  cannot  remain  half 
free  and  half  Prussian ;  and  the  essential  ethics 
of  Democracy  must  be  boldly  adopted  as  the 
guiding  principle  of  international  intercourse 
and  human  progress.  Those  ethical  principles, 
we  may  remind  ourselves  again,  are  not  so  much 
intellectual  and  spiritual,  not  so  much  political 
as  human  and  social — they  rest  on  faith,  on 
responsibility,  on  helpfulness,  and  companion- 
able cooperation. 

That  this  war  will  bring  in  a  revivified  and 
enlarged  sense  of  social  obligation  and  develop 
within  each  of  the  nations  now  fighting  for 


34  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

democratic  ideals  a  new  appreciation  of  duties 
as  well  as  rights,  we  now  see  is  inevitable ;  but 
it  must,  I  repeat,  do  more  than  this.  It  must 
extend  those  ideals  beyond  the  limits  of  indi- 
vidual conduct  or  internal  policy.  Unless  these 
ideals  permeate  the  philosophy  of  the  world, 
domestic  democracy  is  endangered.  Even  for 
our  own  salvation  we  must  strive,  then,  for  in- 
ternational democracy — I  mean,  of  course,  toler- 
ance, frankness,  forbearance,  open-mindedness, 
faith,  and  companionship. 

That,  you  will  say,  is  a  big  program.  Well, 
this  is  a  big  war.  It  will  bring  big,  inconceiva- 
bly big,  psychological  results.  A  new  world  is 
before  us.  To  some  extent  we  can  make  it 
what  we  will;  and  what  it  will  be  depends,  so 
far  as  conscious  effort  can  bring  things  to  pass, 
on  the  purpose  and  desire  of  the  English-speak- 
ing peoples.  We  must  not  fail,  we  simply  must 
not  fail.  Let  us  not  lose  ourselves,  our  inherent 
character,  and  let  us  highly  resolve  to  carry 
forward  into  the  days  of  peace  that  feeling  of 
mutual  respect,  that  sense  of  friendly  coopera- 
tion by  which  we  are  now  possessed.  This  we 
must  do  for  our  own  welfare  and  for  the  wel- 
fare of  the  outside  world. 


BRITISH   AND   AMERICAN 
RELATIONS 


BRITISH  AND   AMERICAN   RELATIONS 


On  the  second  anniversary  of  the  Battle  of 
the  Marne,  M.  Ribot,  the  French  premier,  in  an 
eloquent  address,  used  these  words:  *' Prance 
joins  with  the  civilized  world  in  revindicating 
guarantees  for  a  peace  which  will  not  be  a  mere 
truce,  but  a  lasting  concord  founded  upon  right. 
Where  can  these  guarantees  be  found!  It  is 
for  the  German  people  to  realize  that  it  rests 
with  them  to  supply  them  by  throwing  off  their 
yoke  of  military  despotism,  which,  besides  being 
a  heavy  burden  for  themselves,  is  also  a  danger 
to  the  rest  of  the  world.  If  they  refuse  to  be- 
come a  peaceful  democracy,  it  will  be  their  eco- 
nomic interests  that  will  run  the  risk  of  being 
attacked  through  the  league  of  common  defense 
that  the  nations  will  find  themselves  forced  to 
organize  against  them.  They  who  wish  to  in- 
flict upon  the  world  the  constant  menace  of  an 
aggression  cannot  complain  that  the  world 
should  seek  to  protect  itself  by  all  the  means  at 

37 


38  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

its  disposal.  A  nation  cannot  isolate  herself 
without  incurring  mortal  risks,  and  it  is  con- 
demning one's  self  to  isolation  to  disturb  the 
world  in  its  needs  for  peace,  which  will  become 
still  more  imperious  after  such  a  war. ' ' 

The  nation  that  sets  itself  up  in  isolation  not 
only  menaces  the  peace  of  the  world,  and  men- 
aces it  a  thousand  fold  if  it  be  militant  and  sul- 
len, but  it  seeks  to  shut  itself  off  from  the  per- 
meating forces  of  civilization.  That  fundamen- 
tally was  Germany's  greatest  sin.  Ensconced 
behind  a  wall  of  assumed  superiority,  nourish- 
ing tenderly  her  own  peculiar  KuUur,  believing 
with  a  puerile  simplicity  that  she  alone,  the 
favorite  or  only  child  of  the  All-Highest,  was 
possessed  of  the  secrets  of  life,  worshiping 
with  actual  fanaticism  the  state  which  was  in 
possession  of  unalloyed  sovereignty,  she  fell 
upon  the  outside  nations  with  a  savage  ferocity 
which  still  amazes  the  world.  Sooner  or  later 
she  must  be  brought  to  her  senses ;  how,  we  do 
not  clearly  know,  though  we  have  consecrated 
our  lives  and  our  property  to  the  task  of  beat- 
ing down  and  overwhelming  the  armed  might 
with  which  she  seeks  to  defend  her  uncivilizing 
and  monstrous  pretentions.  To  this  end  we 
give  more  than  ourselves;  we  give  our  sons; 
we  are  prepared  to  sacrifice  all  but  our  honor. 


BRITISH-AMERICAN  RELATIONS       39 

This  may  seem  an  unexpected  introduction 
to  a  talk  on  America  and  Britain,  but  it  is  not 
inappropriate.  For  my  man's  theme  is  inter- 
national duty  rather  than  national  rights.  Pa- 
triotism is  not  enough;  if  it  were  the  sum  of 
the  virtues,  Germany,  the  fanatical  Father- 
land bowing  down  and  offering  up  human  sacri- 
fices on  the  altar  of  Hohenzollern  inerrancy, 
would  be  the  most  virtuous  state  alive.  If  the 
war  teaches  anything,  it  teaches  that  humanity 
is  greater  than  narrow-minded  patriotism.  Do 
not  misunderstand  me :  I  have  not  said  that  pa- 
triotism is  not  good ;  a  man  must  love  his  coun- 
try, his  town,  and  his  own  fireside  or  he  is  less 
than  human.  I  only  say  that  the  nation  setting 
up  its  own  gilded  image  for  worship  has  trans- 
muted a  virtue  into  a  vice  and  menaces  civiliza- 
tion. 

My  purpose  to-day  is  to  take  up  for  considera- 
tion the  historical  relationships  between  Brit- 
ain and  America.  I  shall  not  attempt  to  go  into 
details,  but  only  to  present  a  few  elementary 
things.  We  shall  have  to  glance  at  some  of  the 
troubles  and  misunderstandings  of  the  past,  but 
these  will,  I  think,  disclose  the  basis  for  good 
understanding  now  and  in  the  future;  for 
though  America  broke  away  from  Britain  in  the 
eighteenth  century  and  though  in  the  next  cen- 


40  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

tury  there  were  years  of  hostility  and  hittemess, 
the  fundameiital  fact  is  the  development  of 
similarities,  and  a  growing  appreciation  of 
identity  of  interests  becanse  of  identity  of  basic 
political  and  social  principles.  In  discussing 
these  historical  relationships,  we  shall  have  to 
notice  the  errors  of  Britain,  and  perhaps  I  shall 
seem  to  you  to  overemphasize  them.  If  I  do 
so,  it  will  be  because  I  am  willing  by  glossing 
over  the  shortcomings  and  the  faults  of  the  past, 
to  weaken  any  plea  for  good  understanding 
now  and  in  the  future.  Fortunately  Britain 
has  never  been  foolishly  sensitive.  The  aver- 
age man  of  these  islands  with  an  admirable 
pride  in  his  fatherland,  has  always  unsparingly 
criticized  its  conduct.  It  is  not  necessary  to  go 
to  histories  written  in  Deutschland,  to  find  a  re- 
cital of  Britain's  errors.  If  our  wishes  to  find, 
for  example,  a  magnanimous  and  generous 
story  of  the  American  cause  in  the  War  of  In- 
dependence and  an  almost  unqualified  condem- 
nation of  British  wrong-headedness  let  him  go 
to  Trevelyan's  American  Revolution  and  not  to 
any  recent  work  by  an  American  writer.  The 
American  historian,  more  keenly  aware,  it 
seems,  of  the  difficulties  of  imperial  administra- 
tion than  is  the  Englishman  himself,  now  writes 
with  tolerant  sympathy,  almost  defensively,  of 


BRITISH-AMERICAN  RELATIONS      41 

those  measures  of  imperial  order  whicli  cul- 
minated in  our  cutting  the  apron  strings  which 
had  tied  us  to  an  indulgent  but  bungling  mother 
country.  We  talk,  you  and  I,  of  our  coming 
together  in  intelligent  appreciation  of  the  past ; 
if  we  do  not  take  care  we  shall  pass  each  other 
in  the  dark;  it  would  be  an  amusing  product 
of  our  anxiety  to  be  fair  if  American  scholars 
should  in  the  end  upbraid  Englishmen  because 
the  Englishman  would  not  admit  the  difficulty, 
perhaps  one  might  say  the  impossibility  of  man- 
aging from  Westminster  and  holding  perma- 
nently in  the  empire  some  millions  of  self-de- 
pendent and  self-willed  people.^ 

So  loathsome  do  I  consider  the  boastful  ex- 
uberance of  Teutonic  patriotism  that  I  almost 

*  An  illustration  of  this  amusing  contradiction  appeared  in  a 
brief  discussion  at  the  Royal  Historical  Society  in  which  I 
said  that  the  American  Revolution  and  the  break  up  of  the  old 
empire  occurred  because  the  British  Parliament  was  unable  or 
unwilling  to  accept  certain  principles  in  the  make-up  of  the 
empire.  "But  after  all/'  I  added,  "if  the  break  had  not  come 
on  that  account,  it  is  not  unlikely  it  would  have  come  for  some 
other  reason.  Governing  people  like  the  American  colonists, 
three  thousand  miles  away  from  the  seat  of  government, 
brought  up  almost  impossible  tasks  of  administration. ' '  An 
English  gentleman  present  quite  disagreed  with  me,  saying  that 
there  was,  in  his  opinion,  no  reason  in  the  world  why  the 
empire  should  not  have  rem.ained  unbroken,  if  the  Government 
had  had  a  little  sense.  I  mention  this  difference  of  opinion,  not 
to  indicate  that  one  of  us  was  right  and  the  other  wrong,  but 
to  show  how  there  may  be  differences  due  possibly  to  excessive 
desire  to  be  fair  minded;  of  course  such  an  argument,  dealing 
with  what  might  have  been,  is  fruitless  at  the  best,  for  what 
might  have  happened  did  not  happen;   and  history  deals  with 


42  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

shrink  from  the  task  of  setting  forth  what  I  be- 
lieve to  be  the  mission  and  the  character  of 
America  and  I  hesitate  to  speak  of  the  obliga- 
tions and  mutual  responsibilities  of  the  English- 
speaking  peoples,  lest  I  appear  to  distort  the 
truth  and  to  place  these  two  nations  on  some 
peak  of  isolated  grandeur  arrogating  to  them- 
selves the  wisdom,  culture  and  conscience  of  the 
world.  But  the  simple  fact  is  that  a  great  bur- 
den has  been  thrust  upon  us ;  and  it  is  now  our 
duty,  acting  harmoniously  together,  to  carry 
the  world  through  the  present  misery  and  on- 
ward to  better  things.  With  no  assumption  of 
our  innocence  or  perfection,  we  must  reach  out 
beyond  ourselves  and  extend  the  spirit  of  de- 
mocracy as  the  basis  of  world  organization  and 
progress.  As  I  sought  to  point  out  in  my  last 
lecture,  this  duty  has  been  thrust  upon  us,  and 
we  have  found  that  democratic  institutions,  that 
are  really  based  on  the  philosophy  of  demo- 
cratic life,  are  not  safe  within  national  bound- 
aries, as  long  as  aggressive  militarism,  with 
the  national  accompaniments  of  stealth  and  in- 
trigue, menaces  the  world. 

The  essence  of  democracy  is  social  relation- 
realities  and  not  suppositions.  The  historical  fact  is  that  Great 
Britain  was  then  incapable  of  managing  wisely  colonies  which 
had  been  allowed  to  develop  naturally  and  in  which  the  prin- 
ciples of  English  freedom  had  been  strengthened  by  the  oppor- 
tunities of  unfettered  life  on  a  new  continent. 


BEITISH- AMERICAN  RELATIONS      43 

ship,  its  soul  is  friendliness,  its  heart  is  com- 
panionship. To  promote  this  spirit  in  the  world 
is  primarily  the  task  of  two  nations  having  the 
surest  basis  for  friendly  understanding,  and 
sympathy,  two  nations  using  the  same  language, 
sprung  from  the  same  root  of  political  prin- 
ciple and  effort;  heirs  (though  some  of  our  citi- 
zens may  have  been  born  in  Bohemia  and  Po- 
land or  Greece)  of  John  Eliot  and  Pym  and 
Hampden  and  Sydney  and  John  Milton.  It  is 
our  task  to  work  together  for  justice  and  rea- 
son in  the  world  about  us.  Fundamental  prin- 
ciples of  liberty,  taking  their  rise  in  Britain, 
have  had  tremendous  influence  on  the  world; 
neither  the  soldiers  of  CromwelPs  army  when 
they  drew  up  the  *^ Agreement  of  the  People'' 
nor  John  Milton  when  he  wrote  the  Areopagi- 
tica,  acted  and  wrote  as  the  passing  years  have 
shown  for  Britain  alone ;  and  now  the  time  has 
come  for  both  nations,  which  owe  so  much  to  the 
courageous  defenders  of  liberty,  to  carry  on  the 
struggle  openly  and  boldly  for  a  wider  and 
deeper  application  of  the  ethics  of  freedom. 
We  in  America  feel,  and  must  feel  more  fully 
still,  the  necessity  of  coming  into  intimate  and 
intelligent  friendliness  with  the  British  people. 
I  am  speaking  now  not  of  diplomatic  alliances 
or    of    any    form    of    political    arrangement. 


44  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

Thoug-h,  of  course,  the  American  people  must 
develop  their  own  life,  and  expand  and  clarify 
their  own  character,  we  should  be  anxious  to 
learn  from  others,  and  above  all  to  feel  sym- 
pathy with  the  mind  and  purposes  of  the  masses 
of  the  British  people,  whose  outlook  on  the 
world,  whose  sense  of  moral  obligations,  are,  I 
believe,  essentially  in  harmony  with  our  own. 
All  formalities  of  political  cooperation  aside,  in- 
telligent friendliness  should  be  within  the  range 
of  the  possible,  anything  less  leads  to  a  dark 
and  forbidding  world. 

In  speaking  of  such  ill-feeling,  or  such  ab- 
sence of  sympathy — to  speak  gently — as  Ameri- 
cans have  entertained  towards  Britain,  it  is 
customary  to  speak  as  if  it  were  all  due  to  the 
remembrance  of  the  American  Revolution. 
Doubtless  the  story  of  the  Revolution,  the  war 
that  established  American  Independence,  oc- 
cupies in  the  mind  of  the  average  American  a 
space  and  a  prominence  that  an  Englishman 
can  scarcely  appreciate ;  you  have  had  so  many 
wars,  so  many  defeats  and  victories ;  you  have 
made  so  many  mistakes  and  done  so  much  de- 
serving the  admiration  of  the  world,  that  you 
find  it  hard  to  realize  that  this  war  still  looms 
so  large  and  means  so  much  to  the  Americans. 
But  it  is  withal  a  mistake  to  attribute  American 


BRITISH-AMERICAN  RELATIONS      45 

feeling  to  the  Revolution  alone,  it  is  a  mis- 
take to  neglect  nearly  a  century  of  history  after 
the  Revolution  and  to  lose  sight  of  the  fact 
that  the  governments  of  the  two  nations,  though 
gradually  learning  to  dispose  of  difficulties  in  a 
seemly  way,  were  often  engaged  in  dangerous 
disputes,  and  that  there  were  many  things  be- 
sides diplomatic  controversy  tending  to  keep 
alive  in  America  a  certain  feeling  of  opposition 
or  at  the  best  a  certain  feeling  of  difference  and 
diversity  of  interest  and  sentiment. 

Britain's  mistreatment  of  American  com- 
merce during  the  Napoleonic  period  is  one  of 
the  things  which  has  found  a  lasting  lodgment 
in  the  mind  of  the  American  schoolboy.  He  is 
apt  to  forget  that  Jefferson  said  that  England 
had  become  a  den  of  pirates  and  France  a  nest 
of  thieves,  that  England  was  fighting  as  she 
is  to-day,  against  a  usurper  itching  for  world- 
domination,  whose  plans  contemplated  an  em- 
pire in  every  continent  of  the  globe  and  that 
England's  so-called  piracy  was  tender  and  com- 
passionate when  compared  with  the  modern  va- 
riety practised  by  Germany  under  the  sweet 
title  of  freedom  of  the  seas. 

After  the  war  of  1812  came  fifty  years  and 
more  of  unfriendliness  and  just  now  I  am  will- 
ing to  place  the  main  burden  for  that  hostility 


46  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

on  Britain.  It  is  a  dismal  story,  a  story  of  ar- 
rogance and,  in  part,  carefully  nourished  ill- 
will,  and  it  discloses  the  criminal  folly  of  petty 
personal  animosity.  There  were  breaks  in  the 
clouds,  but  on  the  whole  I  offer  no  excuse,  only 
stopping  to  say  that  any  one  supposing  that 
America  meanwhile  walked  the  primrose  path 
of  gentleness  has  no  knowledge  of  the  bump- 
tiousness of  our  days  of  national  adolescence. 
Britain  ^s  career  in  the  world  at  large  during 
the  first  sixty  years  or  so  of  the  nineteenth 
century  has  its  dark  and  repellent  side — the 
opium  war,  the  Crimea,  and  the  swagger  of 
Palmerstonian  imperialism  cannot  be  remem- 
bered with  equanimity,  nor  can  the  long  policy 
of  protection  and  friendliness  for  the  unspeak- 
able Turk. 

American  democracy  during  those  decades 
was  often  crude,  boastful  and  self-satisfied.  It 
often  showed  itself  in  its  less  lovely  aspects  to 
foreigners,  who  in  their  turn  failed  to  see  in 
our  rapidly  developing  country  a  pure  idealism 
and  a  lofty  faith  which  was  even  then  affect- 
ing the  outside  world.  American  diplomacy 
was  not  unskilful;  but  the  art  and  courtesy  of 
the  diplomatist  often  suffered  from  the  high- 
flown  speech  of  the  politician,  who  with  a  fatal 
gift  of  words  poured  out  his  periods  on  the 


BRITISH- AMERICAN  RELATIONS      47 

hustings,  and  even  on  the  floor  of  Congress. 
That  our  tone  and  temper  were  irritating  there 
can  be  no  doubt,  and  one  special  practise,  known 
commonly  as  twisting  the  tail  of  the  British 
lion,  was  often  used  to  arouse  the  enthusiasm 
of  the  orator's  audience. 

The  British  traveler  who,  like  Charles  Dick- 
ens or  Mrs.  Trollope,  lampooned  American  life 
for  the  amusement  of  his  own  people  and  held 
up  to  view  the  crudities,  vulgarities  and  sim- 
plicities of  our  unsophisticated  society,  did  un- 
told damage.  The  sharp  and  unfriendly  criti- 
cism of  British  journals  also  was  deeply  re- 
sented and  brought  forth  keen  retorts  from 
American  writers.  This  constant  campaign  of 
journalistic  recrimination,  which  the  people  of 
Britain  have  long  ago  forgotten  or  ignored, 
kept  alive  for  decades  a  bitterness  of  feeling 
which  might  otherwise  have  disappeared  or 
been  greatly  modified  by  the  passing  years. 
Such  English  writers  as  pleased  themselves  by 
depicting  American  shortcomings  and  follies 
might  have  taken  a  lesson  from  Harriet  Marti- 
neau  who  summed  up  the  situation  truthfully 
and  nobly  by  saying  there  is  the  greatest  hope 
for  a  people  that  can  cherish  high  ideals. 
Though  these  ideals  were  often  expressed  in 
extravagant  and  boastful  terms — they  were  real 


48  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

and  elemental  but  the  literary  or  articulate 
classes  of  Britain  would  not  see  them,  and  in- 
deed did  not,  I  fear,  desire  to  see  them.  No  one 
wishing  to  understand  American  history  can 
omit  the  sentiments  of  democratic  idealism 
which  animated  the  people  from  the  days  of 
the  Revolution  to — when?  Well,  how  shall  I 
answer?  During  the  last  twenty  years  we  have 
been  criticizing  ourselves  unmercifully,  looking 
askance  at  our  constitution — the  oldest  and  most 
conservative  national  constitution  in  the  world 
— finding  faults  with  our  courts,  grumbling 
about  our  pitiful  municipal  governments,  ques- 
tioning our  capacity  to  manage  the  perplexing 
and  pressing  problems  of  social  and  economic 
order,  envious,  in  some  measure,  of  the  hard 
glittering  efficiency  of  Germany;  for  the  first 
time  in  our  national  history  we  were  becoming 
distrustful  of  our  own  superior  capacity  and  our 
own  high  destiny,  although  in  reality  we  were 
taking  a  firmer  hold  on  duty  and  cleansing  our- 
selves from  much  of  our  former  error.  I  have 
not  as  yet  answered  my  question  as  to  when 
this  strain  of  idealism  disappeared  from 
American  character,  but  I  can  now  answer.  It 
has  not  disappeared  at  all.  To-day  the  land 
is  filled  with  more  than  a  hatred  of  Ger- 
man MacJitpolitik.     The  people  have  not  been 


BKITISH-AMERICAN  RELATIONS      49 

aroused  by  fear  for  themselves,  though  perhaps 
they  should  have  been;  they  have  not  been 
stirred  by  hope  of  material  profit;  they  have 
not  been  moved  by  motives  of  revenge — 1  mean, 
none  of  these  has  been  the  chiefest  influence 
drawing  them  into  the  world  war.  They  hate 
German  Machtpolitik,  because  it  is  the  policy  of 
force ;  they  detest  cruelty  because  it  is  cruelty ; 
they  loathe  deceit  and  barbarity  because  deceit 
and  barbarity  are  loathesome.  But  I  believe  I 
am  right  in  declaring  that  the  appeals  made  by 
President  Wilson  to  essential  sense  of  right  and 
justice,  the  demand  that  the  world  be  freed  from 
dynastic  ambitions  which  are  fed  by  military 
aggression,  the  call  for  the  succor  of  ravished 
Belgium  and  martyrized  Serbia,  the  need  of  sav^ 
ing  democracy  from  the  grasp  of  imperialistic 
autocracy,  the  realization  that  America  owes  a 
duty  not  to  herself  alone  but  also  to  the  world — 
these  things  have  fired  the  American  heart  and 
made  us  resolve  not  to  lay  down  the  sword  till 
Hohenzollern  arrogance  shall  give  way  to  de- 
cency and  truth.  We  have  some  hold  on  the  be- 
lief, some  faint  hold  at  least,  some  portion  of 
assured  trust,  that  we  are  now  fulfilling  our  des- 
tiny and  doing  our  duty,  that  we  are  really  in 
some  degree  responsive  to  the  injunction  of  the 
American  poet : 


50  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

*'Be  thou  the  guardian  of  the  weak, 
Of  the  unfriended,  thou  the  friend, 
No  guerdon  for  thy  valour  seek, 
No  end  beyond  the  avowed  end. 
Wouldst  thou  thy  godlike  power  preserve, 
Be  godlike  in  thy  will  to  serve.'* 

I  do  not  wish  to  speak  boastfully :  no  Ameri- 
can that  I  know  is  in  a  boastful  mood ;  we  are  not 
trumpeting  our  valor  or  our  power.  But  you 
will  forgive  me,  I  am  sure,  if  my  heart  is 
warmed  by  the  belief  that  America  is  not  false 
to  its  own  past  and  to  its  high  convictions.  You 
will  forgive  me  if  I  am  moved  by  the  sight,  to 
use  Milton's  words,^  of  a  noble  and  puissant  na- 
tion rousing  herself  to  take  part  with  fortitude 
and  courage  in  this  horrible  war  which  has  al- 
ready brought  desolation  to  your  firesides,  and 
to  take  part  in  it  with  no  thought  save  that  of 
service.  God  grant  that  by  your  side  in  suffer- 
ing and  in  the  elation  of  victory,  we  and  you 
may  cling  fast  to  those  sentiments  of  justice 
and  rectitude  which  the  world  sorely  needs  if 
civilization  is  to  survive.  Omitting  for  the  pres- 
ent any  further  reference  to  British  and  Ameri- 
can errors  during  the  last  century,  because  I 

*  * '  Methinks  T  see  in  my  mind  a  noble  and  puissant  nation 
rousing  herself  like  a  strong  man  after  sleep,  and  shaking  her 
Invincible  locks,  methinks  I  see  her  as  an  eagle  renewing  her 
mighty  youth,  and  kindling  her  undazzled  eyes  at  the  full 
midday  beam  I ' ' 


BRITISH-AMERICAN  RELATIONS       51 

shall  need  to  refer  to  tliem  again,  let  ns  grasp 
at  once  a  main  and  elemental  fact. 

Both  Britain  and  America  were  living;  they 
were  stumbling  through  experiences  and  devel- 
oping character.  An  historical  student  resents 
almost  with  anger  the  way  the  laymen  often  use 
history ;  for  it  is  not  history  at  all.  The  unhis- 
torical  man  is  too  likely  to  seize  upon  some  inci- 
dent, to  detach  it  from  its  environment,  and  to 
hurl  it  as  a  missile  in  argument,  as  if  history 
were  but  a  basket  of  pebbles  snugly  fitting  the 
hand.  It  is  true  that  a  nation's  character  and 
quality  can  be  discovered  by  what  it  does ;  there 
is  no  other  way  of  discovery.  If  I  wished  to  tell 
what  kind  of  a  psychosis  Germany  has  to-day,  I 
should  say  that  her  hero  is  that  old  scamp,  Fred- 
erick the  Great.  History,  however,  does  not 
deal  with  separated  incidents  but  with  life  and 
growth.  Nations,  perhaps  more  surely  than  sep- 
arate individuals,  change  in  character,  in 
psychological  reactions.  Nothing  can  be  more 
humorous  than  to  suppose  you  can  know  Britain 
to-day  solely  by  knowing  what  she  was  a  hun- 
dred and  forty  years  ago.  It  would  probably 
be  safer  to  say  that  a  boy  who  ^*  swiped '^  an  ap- 
ple from  a  farmer's  wagon  would  surely  grow 
into  a  bandit.  There  are,  of  course,  certain 
traits,  qualities  and  aptitudes  of  national  char- 


52  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

acter  that  are  discovered  by  tracing  the  course 
of  its  history ;  there  may  possibly  be  special  il- 
luminating incidents ;  but  the  law  of  history  and 
of  life  is  change  and  adaptation.  Even  Ger- 
many, still  ruled  by  a  conception  of  kingship 
that  came  out  of  the  later  middle  ages  and  by 
worse  than  that,  has  undergone  change ;  and  the 
world  outside  her  borders  has  but  one  prayer  to- 
day and  that  is  that  the  experiences  of  this  war 
will  bring  conversion  and  regeneration. 

In  England  there  have  been  for  centuries 
two  conflicting  forces.  There  were,  it  is  true, 
times  of  almost  complete  stagnation,  but  during 
those  times  there  was  a  more  or  less  uncon- 
scious preparation  for  the  next  step  forward, 
a  gathering  of  strength  to  move  on  toward  a 
fuller  and  freer  life.  I  shall  not  carry  you  far 
back  into  this  struggle;  let  us  begin  with  the 
seventeenth  century,  about  the  time  that  Prus- 
sia, no  bigger  than  a  man's  hand,  appeared  on 
the  horizon  and  began,  with  war  as  its  ^^  national 
industry, '^  that  steady  policy  of  aggression 
which  has  now  drenched  Europe  in  blood.  Those 
were  the  days  of  the  Great  Rebellion  in  Eng- 
land when  the  opponents  of  the  divine  right  of 
kings  were  formulating  and  putting  to  practi- 
cal use  the  revolutionary  philosophy  which 
America  in  later  years  used  so  effectively.    If 


BRITISH-AMERICAN  RELATIONS       53 

any  one  would  understand  the  present  conflict 
or  our  debt  to  Britain,  he  must  go  back  to  those 
years,  and  see  what  it  meant  that  Sir  John  Eliot 
died  in  the  Tower  and  Hampden  gave  up  his 
life  on  Chalgrove  Field.  Before  the  end  of  the 
century,  England's  sovereign  rested  his  power 
on  parliamentary  authority.  In  reality  power 
passed  to  the  great  Wliig  families ;  England  was 
essentially  an  aristocracy  and  there  ensued 
three-quarters  of  a  century  in  which  there  was 
comparatively  little  upward  movement  toward 
modern  democracy.  Still  England  had  a  Par- 
liament, she  had  a  crude,  imperfect  and  corrupt 
representative  system,  and,  even  if  her  states- 
men and  publicists  paid  only  lip  service  to  the 
principle,  they  taught  and  believed  that  govern- 
ment springs  from  consent,  originates  in  the 
people  and  is  bounded  in  the  exercise  of  its 
power  by  human  rights  and  justice.  Of  the 
early  decades  of  George  III.  you  know  the  con- 
ditions well ;  they  are  brilliantly  told  in  Trevel- 
yan's  Fox  and  can  be  seen  face  to  face  in  Wal- 
pole's  letters.  Trevelyan  tells  us  that  there  is 
no  more  evidence  of  Christian  Religion  in  Hor- 
ace Walpole's  writings  than  in  those  of  Pliny 
the  younger.  I  have  been  a  somewhat  careful 
reader  of  Walpole  and  can  support  Sir  George's 
statement.    It  was  Voltaire  who  uttered  the  fa- 


54  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

mous  epigram  that  there  was  no  more  religion 
in  England  than  the  minimum  necessary  for 
party  purposes ;  and  we  may  remember  that  it 
has  been  said  that  no  politician  worthy  of  his 
craft  thought  it  wise  to  get  along  without  a 
clergyman  in  his  train.  The  sudden  access  of 
wealth  and  power  with  the  defeat  of  France  in 
Canada  and  India,  the  coming  in  of  wealthy 
planters  from  the  East  and  West  Indies,  intro- 
duced what  Pitt  called  Asiatic  habits  of  life  and 
threatened  to  bring  in  Asiatic  principles  of  poli- 
tics. 

T\lien  the  American  Revolution  came  on, 
Britain  was  ready,  or  nearly  ready,  for  another 
move  forward;  there  were  signs  of  awakening. 
Vulgar  ostentation,  corruption  in  high  places, 
dissipation,  venality,  low-browed  appreciation 
of  national  obligations,  were  not  all.  In  re- 
ligion, in  political  economy,  in  industry,  even  in 
politics  there  are  some  evidences  that  a  new 
and  better  England  was  coming.  For  the  really 
great  and  creative  forces  of  the  time  were  rep- 
resented by  John  Wesley,  Adam  Smith,  Ark- 
wright  and  Hargreave,  Edmund  Burke,  Fox  and 
Pitt.  Of  course  the  tide  had  not  clearly  turned 
till  fifty  years  and  more  after  the  beginning  of 
our  revolutionary  era;  but  even  in  its  days  of 
social   frivolity,   Britain's   condition   was   not 


BRITISH-AMERICAN  RELATIONS       55 

hopeless.  It  is  a  striking  fact  that  Smith's 
Wealth  of  Nations  was  published  in  the  year  of 
the  American  Declaration  of  Independence.  It 
meant  in  all  its  reasoning  and  its  ethics  the  com- 
ing in  of  a  new  school  of  thought,  the  founda- 
tion principles  of  liberal  trade  on  which  Britain 
in  the  next  century  was  to  raise  the  mighty 
structure  of  imperial  commerce.  The  philos- 
ophy of  Burke,  the  open-hearted  humanism  of 
Fox,  the  new,  free  and  rational  economy  of 
Adam  Smith,  the  inventions  of  textile  machin- 
ery by  Hargreave  and  Arkwright — these  were 
the  things  which  were  to  make  over  the  old-time 
Britain  and  to  raise  her  to  a  new  position  of 
usefulness. 

However  this  may  all  be,  the  American  Rev- 
olution came  as  a  great  shock  to  Britain.  The 
effects  of  that  Revolution  and  the  French  Rev- 
olution are  hard  to  trace.  In  part,  no  doubt, 
influences  worked  at  cross  purposes ;  a  new  or- 
der of  political  thinking  forced  itself  in,  new 
conceptions  of  personal  worth  and  freedom  af- 
fected Britain  as  they  did  the  continent;  and 
still,  especially  as  the  result  of  the  excesses  of 
the  French  Revolution  and  of  the  long  wars 
against  Napoleon,  certain  forces  of  reaction 
were  given  sufficient  strength  to  maintain  them- 
selves till  their  grip  was  loosened  by  the  reform 


56  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

measure  of  1832.  Despite  these  reactionary 
forces,  the  fortress  of  feudalism — I  use  Gold- 
win  Smith's  phrase — ^began,  I  believe,  during 
our  Revolutionary  era  to  show  evidences  of 
weakening. 

Now  if  we  look  more  carefully  at  the  Revolu- 
tion itself,  the  first  thing  we  see,  as  some  wise 
man  has  said,  is  the  England  of  the  seventeenth 
century  arising  to  combat  the  England  of  the 
eighteenth.  This  is  most  literally  and  start- 
lingly  true.  The  English  race  split  asunder  in 
the  seventeenth  century,  not  in  the  eighteenth: 
the  Revolution  broke  the  political  connection. 
The  men  that  settled  the  colonies,  especially 
those  coming  to  Massachusetts,  carried  with 
them  the  thinking  and  the  principles  of  the 
Great  Rebellion  of  the  seventeenth  century. 
And  so  when  Britain  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
under  the  guidance  of  a  stiff-necked  German 
monarch,  and  under  the  sway  of  a  junker  aris- 
tocracy, sought  to  tax  America  and  to  set  up 
the  complete  and  unlimited  authority  of  Par- 
liament, America  was  prepared  to  meet  her — 
how?  By  reference  to  the  precedents  and  the 
principles  of  English  liberty,  by  insisting  that 
the  doctrines  which  Britain  had  produced  and 
which  had  grown  strong  in  her  self-governing 
colonies,  should  be  applied  in  the  empire  as  a 


BRITISH-AMERICAN  RELATIONS      57 

whole.  This  should  be  fully  noticed,  and  may 
I  say  to  add  emphasis  to  this  assertion  that  that 
particular  period  has  been  my  special  field  of 
study  for  twenty  years  ?  I  may  be  vain  if  I  say 
that  I  speak  with  some  authority,  but  certainly 
I  speak  with  assurance.  The  American  Revolu- 
tion is,  on  the  whole,  the  chief  jewel  in  the  im- 
perial diadem  of  Britain;  it  was  one  of  her 
greatest  deeds.  It  was  based  on  English  born 
philosophy ;  it  was  waged  by  colonists  who  had 
developed  in  freedom;  it  carried  forward  to  a 
higher  stage,  or  onward  toward  maturity,  those 
principles  and  practises  for  the  foundation  of 
which  Englishmen  had  given  their  lives.  None 
but  English  colonies  could  have  made  such  a 
fight  for  independence,  none  but  Englishmen, 
who  in  the  new  world  had  had  new  opportunities 
for  self-realization,  could  have  institutionalized, 
made  over  into  written  legal  binding  form,  those 
fundamental  precepts  of  individual  liberty 
which  had  not  yet  found  full  expression  in 
Britain  itself.  When  I  say  ^^none  but  English- 
men" could  have  done  so,  I  am  not  speaking  in 
terms  of  race,  or  theoretically,  I  am  speaking 
historically.  Where  in  the  eighteenth  century 
could  be  seen  other  colonists  able  to  find,  in  the 
history  and  institutions  of  their  mother  coun- 
try, foundations  for  declared  principles  of  self- 


58  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

government!  Who  but  English  colonists  could 
at  that  time  have  written  those  amazingly  ad- 
vanced, conservative,  human,  clever,  determined 
and  wise  state  papers  that  came  from  the  pens 
of  Dickinson,  Samuel  Adams,  Jefferson  and 
others  of  that  brilliant  revolutionary  group? 
But — if  I  must  cling  closely  to  historical  facts 
and  not  indulge  in  **coulds''  and  *^ mights'^ — it 
is  sufficient  to  say,  no  others  did  do  it ;  and  that 
is  enough.  No  one  but  Englishmen  established 
American  Independence,  and  this  they  did  on 
the  basis  of  English  history.  This  they  did 
possibly  because  of  native  racial  capacity,  and 
certainly  because  they  had  been  allowed  self- 
development.  You  would  not  turn — would  you  ? 
— to  the  France  of  Louis  the  XVth,  to  the 
Prussia  of  that  grim  old  robber  Frederick,  or 
to  any  principality  of  the  kings  and  princelings 
of  autocratic  Germany,  to  decadent  old  Spain, 
to  distracted  Italy,  or  to  half-barbaric  Russia 
under  Catherine  II.,  of  whom  the  less  is  said 
the  better. 

I  have  been  speaking  of  principles  of  indi- 
vidual liberty,  and  the  practise  of  representa- 
tion as  a  protection  of  liberty — of  the  institu- 
tions and  the  ideals  which  Englishmen  in  Amer- 
ica carried  out  beyond  the  stage  to  which  Eng- 
land herself  had  at  that  time  developed  them. 


BRITISH-AMERICAN  RELATIONS       59 

But  there  was  more  than  that.  Turn  where  we 
may,  we  are  struck,  if  we  study  carefully,  first 
by  the  remarkable  political  astuteness  of  the 
American  Englishmen  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, the  remarkable  cleverness  with  which  they 
used  principles  and  made  them  real  in  working 
institutions,  and,  second,  by  the  fact  that  in  an 
astonishingly  large  part  of  their  work  they  only 
adapted,  only  shaped,  fitted  and  adjusted  insti- 
tutions, principles  and  practises  which  had  their 
home  in  Britain.  We  have  in  America  several 
qualities  and  several  political  institutions  or 
modes  of  action  which  we  consider  peculiarly 
American,  or,  if  we  admit  that  some  of  them  are 
no  longer  peculiar  to  us  because  they  have 
reached  out  over  the  globe,  we  think  of  them 
as  American  creations.  The  qualities  I  have  in 
mind  are  in  large  degree  due  to  life  on  a  free, 
wide  open  continent — socially,  industrially,  in- 
tellectually, America  is  the  child  of  a  spacious 
continent.  The  institutions  or  the  forms  of  po- 
litical action  are  the  fixed  written  constitutions, 
the  limited  government,  the  power  and  inde- 
pendence of  the  courts,  and  the  general  system 
of  federal  order.  By  this  last  I  mean  the  gen- 
eral structure  of  the  United  States  as  a  whole — 
a  body  of  states,  acting  side  by  side,  each  with 
its  quota  of  independent  authority,  and,  acting 


60  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

coordinately  with  them,  a  central  government 
charged  with  duties  of  a  broader  scope  but  of 
specific  character.  Whence  came  these  institu- 
tions, these  mechanisms,  these  forms  of  politi- 
cal action,  these  habits  of  political  thought? 
Largely  from  Britain.  Indeed,  wherever  you 
dig — I  shall  probably  not  exaggerate — ^wherever 
you  really  dig  down  into  things  to  understand 
them  by  finding  their  origin,  you  will  be  almost 
sure  to  find  two  things — our  two  parents,  the 
**frontier''  and  the  old  British  Empire.  I  spent 
several  years  in  studying  just  one  institutional 
principle  that  we  think  peculiarly  our  own,  the 
right  of  a  court  to  declare  a  law  unconstitu- 
tional, a  principle  England  does  not  have.  In 
making  this  study  I  had  not  gone  far  before  I 
found  myself  in  the  philosophy  of  the  American 
Revolution,  I  found  the  American  of  that  time 
making  use  of  the  philosophy  and  the  judicial 
dicta  of  the  British  seventeenth  century,  I  be- 
came  familiar  with  Coke  and  Hobart  and  Pym 
and  the  soldiers  of  CromwelPs  army,  with  the 
levelers  of  the  middle  seventeenth  century,  with 
Harrington  and  Sydney  and  Locke;  I  was  ex- 
amining, too,  the  structure  and  operations  of  the 
old  colonial  empire.  I  discovered,  in  other 
words,  that  even  that  institution  could  be  un- 


BRITISH-AMERICAN  RELATIONS       61 

derstood  only  by  a  study  of  English  and  Brit- 
ish imperial  history. 

I  have  studied  and  examined  for  years  the 
principles  on  which  rest  our  federal  structure, 
i.  e.,  that  compounded,  that  multiple  state,  we 
call  the  United  States.  Whence  came  it!  Why 
came  it?  The  form  has  now  spread  over  the 
world.  Switzerland,  Germany,  Mexico,  most  of 
South  America,  Canada,  Australia,  are  now  fed- 
eral states.  Where  did  this  peculiarly  useful 
and  viable  form  of  imperial  order  come  from? 
From  the  old  British  Empire.  And  the  tragedy 
of  the  American  Revolution,  or  the  comedy  of 
the  whole  thing  is  that,  when  the  Americans 
claimed  the  advantages  of  federalism  in  the  dec- 
ade of  discussion  between  1765  and  1775, — when 
they  claimed,  that  is  to  say,  that  each  colony, 
like  one  of  our  present  states  in  the  nation,  had 
an  indefeasible  right  to  its  own  quota  of  free 
action,  the  Englishmen  of  Parliament  could  not 
see  that  the  empire  was  already  federal,  already 
multiple,  already  non-unitary.  And  so  we  broke 
away  and  institutionalized,  made  over  into  our 
own  legally-based  institutions,  the  structure  and 
the  spirit  of  the  old  Empire  which  Britain  had 
allowed  to  develop  in  freedom  in  America. 

There  is   something   inspiring   and   almost 
startling  in  the  unerring  way  in  which  one 's  re- 


62  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

searches  carry  him  back  to  British  and  espe- 
cially to  imperial  history.  Moreover,  when  we 
study  British  imperial  history,  we  are  struck  by 
the  significance  of  the  War  of  American  Inde- 
pendence. As  we  look  out  on  the  world  to-day 
we  see  two  great  political  bodies — I  hesitate  to 
call  them  empires  since  the  world  commonly 
connotes  imperialistic  ambition  and  supporting 
militarism — those  bodies  are  the  British  Empire 
and  the  United  States  of  America,  and  both  are 
the  products  of  British  history.  One  of  them, 
the  American,  is  founded  totally  in  its  length 
and  breadth  (unless  by  acquiring  dependencies 
from  Spain  after  the  war  of  1898  a  change  was 
wrought  in  some  particulars)  on  law  on  a  legal 
scheme  of  empire,  on  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States.  The  other  is  founded  on  oppor- 
tunism and  on  opportunity,  on  the  ethics  of  the 
philosopher-statesman  Burke.  For  Burke,  the 
friend  of  America  and  the  prophet  of  success- 
ful British  imperialism,  poured  out  floods  of 
captivating  eloquence  in  behalf  of  freedom  as 
the  soul  of  successful  and  honorable  expansion 
and  dominion.  Freedom  was  itself  force;  not 
military  coercion,  not  even  legal  dictation  when 
free  communities  were  to  be  held  to  duty — not 
these,  but  freedom,  constituted  compulsion. 
How  have  the  passing  decades  given  the  proof ! 


BRITISH-AMERICAN  RELATIONS      63 

*^The  Sons  of  England/'  Burke  exclaimed, 
*^  worship  freedom.  .  .  .  The  more  they  multi- 
ply, the  more  friends  you  will  have;  the  more 
ardently  they  love  liberty,  the  more  perfect  will 
be  their  obedience.  Slavery  they  can  have  any- 
where. It  is  a  weed  that  grows  in  every  soil. 
They  may  have  it  from  Spain,  they  may  have  it 
from  Prussia.  But  freedom  they  can  have  only 
from  you.''  In  the  eighteenth  century,  the 
thoughtless  leaders  of  British  society,  busy  as 
they  were  with  horses,  cards  and  dice,  were  not 
thrilled  by  the  eloquence  of  the  prophet.  Not 
till  the  trying  days  of  August,  1914,  did  Britain 
realize  that  the  ethics  of  Burke,  which  little  by 
little  had  permeated  and  mastered  the  princi- 
ples, plans  and  practises  of  her  empire,  had 
made  for  her  a  dominion  that  was  stronger  than 
the  steel  of  Roman  or  Teutonic  workmanship — 
not  till  1914,  when  everywhere,  in  the  woods  of 
Western  Canada,  in  Australia,  in  New  Zealand, 
in  forgotten  places  of  the  globe  where  English- 
men toiled,  young  men  sprang  to  arms  unsum- 
moned,  ready  to  give  their  lives  for  an  idea,  to 
sacrifice  all  for  an  affection.  After  all,  that  is 
the  outstanding  lesson  of  the  war:  freedom  is 
not  disintegration,  freedom  is  not  dissipation 
of  duty;  freedom  is  the  cement  of  empire  as  of 
society.      Of  course   it   was   all   dramatically 


64  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

brought  on,  pathetically,  tragically  brought  on 
to  the  world's  stage  that  we  might  behold  it — 
those  boys  from  the  South  Sea  gasping  with 
thirst  and  dying  by  thousands  at  Gallipoli,  and 
the  brave  young  Canadians  at  Ypres  suffocating 
with  poisonous  gases,  still  holding  on  and  giv- 
ing a  new  and  fresh  glory  to  ghastly  and  devil- 
ish warfare.  And  there  was  South  Africa,  a 
self -containing  commonwealth,  on  which  the  lav- 
ish hand  of  Britain  had  bestowed  complete  free- 
dom after  the  defeat  of  the  Boer,  now  freely 
standing  by,  won  by  generosity  in  a  decade  or 
two  from  enmity  and  suspicion  to  loyalty  and 
readiness  to  die  for  the  ideals  of  the  empire. 

That  is  the  outstanding  lesson  of  the  war,  and 
the  horrible  tragedy  of  it  is  Germany,  still  cher- 
ishing the  belief  in  brutal  compulsion,  still  cher- 
ishing conquest,  still  believing  that  men  can  be 
terrorized  and  beaten  into  humility  and  service. 
This,  I  say,  is  the  outstanding  lesson  of  the  war. 
Again  it  is  democracy  over  against  autocracy. 
There  are  many  philosophical  grounds  for  faith 
in  democracy,  but  among  them  the  chief  is  this 
— that  self-compulsion,  self-control,  the  un- 
forced acceptance  of  duty,  constitute  the  essence 
of  social  morality.  Therefore  when  we  find,  in 
a  vast  empire  reaching  around  the  world,  mil- 
lions of  men  and  women  freely  answering  the 


BRITISH-AMERICAN  RELATIONS      65 

call  to  duty,  freely  giving  up  their  property  and 
their  lives  because  they  ought  to  and  want  to, 
not  because  they  have  to,  when  we  see  a  great 
empire  relying  for  its  life  on  the  self-imposed 
obligation  of  far  away  peoples,  we  have  new 
faith  and  new  hope,  and  we  realize  that  under 
the  most  critical  test,  under  the  most  searching 
test  imaginable,  self-compulsion  has  demon- 
strated its  value  and  its  practical  strength.  Pos- 
sibly by  superior  mandate,  by  brute  force,  by 
that  all-favored  thing  called  efficiency,  you  can 
obtain  more  symmetry,  better  order,  less  con- 
stant petty  annoyances,  but  if  the  last  fifty  years 
and  the  last  four  years  have  not  given  you  new 
faith  in  the  essentially  ethical  and  essentially 
elevating  effect  of  individual  self-control  and 
democratic  management  as  over  against  ex- 
ternal and  superior  compulsion,  this  world  has 
few  interests  for  you  and  no  prospect  of  conso- 
lation. If  the  orgy  of  the  Germans  in  Belgium, 
the  tragic  history  of  Alsace  and  Lorraine,  the 
martyrdom  of  Poland  under  the  heel  of  a  loot- 
ing army,  the  readiness  of  a  great  people  to  be- 
lieve what  they  are  told  in  a  fateful  moment  of 
the  world's  history,  their  incapacity  to  make 
their  wills  felt  if  they  have  any,  do  not  move 
you  to  put  up  patiently  with  the  uneasy,  rest- 
less,   self-assertive    strivings    of    democracy. 


66  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

there's  no  comfortable  home  for  you  save  in  a 
Wohnung  on  the  Friedrichstrasse  where  you 
can  sit  by  the  window  and  read  on  the  opposite 
wall  the  pleasant  command  ^'Verhoten, 


J ) 


BRITISH  AND  AMERICAN  RELATIONS 

II 

The  concluding  statement  of  the  last  lecture 
may  seem  too  far  away  from  American  and 
British  relations;  and  too  far  away  from  the 
American  Revolution,  from  which  I  digressed 
to  consider  the  nature  of  the  two  great  empires 
— shall  I  call  them? — of  British  origin.  But  the 
cry  is  not  so  far ;  for  the  American  Revolution 
— which  was  a  British  revolution — was,  as  I 
have  said,  itself  a  creative  incident  in  the  de- 
velopment of  British  liberalism.  And,  in  the 
decades  of  the  nineteenth  century,  one  fact,  one 
simple  but  momentous  fact,  stood  out  supremely 
before  the  world  and  before  Britain:  America 
actually  was  making  a  success  of  democracy. 
The  principles  of  the  Revolution,  moreover,  re- 
acted on  the  whole  of  Europe,  although  the  way 
in  which  its  fullest  effect  in  Germany  was 
stamped  out  under  the  heel  of  Bismarck  sixty 
years  ago  is  a  pathetic  and  dismal  story.  Do 
you  suppose  it  is  all  just  an  accident  that  Amer- 
ica, though  loathing  war,  has  finally  cast  in  its 
lot  with  the  democracies  of  Western  Europe 

67 


68  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

and  has  shown,  with  a  fervor  which  surprises 
ourselves,  a  whole-hearted  detestation  of  mili- 
tary conquest  and  militaristic  brutality!  Does 
this  seem  accidental,  or  does  our  delay  in  en- 
tering the  contest  now  seem  due,  first  to  the  need 
of  recovering  from  amazement ;  second,  the  need 
of  perceiving  the  essential  danger  to  democracy ; 
third,  the  need  of  keen  and  sure  perception  of 
all  the  implications  of  the  conflict? 

There  are  scores  of  other  things  which  we 
ought  to  consider  if  we  view  this  whole  situation 
aright.  We  must  be  content  now  with  a  few  of 
them.  Let  us  notice  first  the  fact — the  simple 
but  all  powerful  fact — that  for  just  about  one 
hundred  years,  England  has  been  moving  on 
slowly,  sometimes  painfully,  toward  liberalism. 
This  is  a  simple  statement;  but  it  is  often  en- 
tirely lost  sight  of.  Most  of  us  have  not  had  the 
time  or  the  inclination  to  study  the  history  of 
the  last  century.  Therefore,  I  wish  to  empha- 
size what  is  so  preeminently  plain  in  that  his- 
tory. The  plainest  thing  is  the  unintermittent 
contest,  at  times  an  open  struggle,  between  the 
old  forces  of  privilege  and  the  forces  of  indi- 
vidual and  social  right.  Step  by  step,  democ- 
racy, or  liberalism,  won — the  expansion  of  the 
suffrage  in  1832,  1867,  1884,  the  repeal  of  the 
Corn  Laws  which  protected  the  landowner  and 


BRITISH-AMERICAN  RELATIONS      69 

burdened  the  workman,  the  series  of  acts  which 
little  by  little  gave  the  working  classes  new  life 
and  opportunity,  the  growth  of  a  wider,  wiser 
and  deeper  faith  in  the  great  body  of  men,  a 
faith  which  was  much  more  valuable  than  mere 
legislation,  for  it  filled  institutions  with  new 
spirit  and  reached  out  to  shape  and  revivify  the 
whole  imperial  structure.  The  culmination  of 
this  movement  toward  democracy  is  found  in  the 
series  of  democratic  acts  of  the  early  twentieth 
century,  and  England's  entry  into  this  war  in 
which  she  frankly  defends  the  right  of  people  to 
live  their  own  lives  without  dictation,  in  which 
she  frankly  and  with  tremendous  spiritual  en- 
thusiasm stands  forth  as  the  protector  of  popu- 
lar institutions  against  military  supervision  and 
swaggering  officialism. 

When  we  speak  of  the  close  resemblance  of 
British  to  American  institutions  and  principles, 
we  are  sometimes  reminded  that  Britain  has  a 
titled  aristocracy  and  we  have  not ;  and  our  po- 
litical habits  of  mind  make  it  seem  strange  to 
us  that  certain  men  should  have  rights  and 
duties  as  members  of  the  House  of  Lords,  a  po- 
sition which  they  obtain  by  birth  and  not  by  ef- 
fort or  by  the  system  of  politics  which  makes 
American  senators.  To  discuss  the  propriety 
or  the  impropriety  of  an  established  aristocracy 


70  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

would  on  sucli  an  occasion  as  this  be  a  gross  im- 
pertinence, and  I  must  content  myself  with  say- 
ing that  there  is,  I  believe,  as  strong  a  faith  in 
democratic  opinion  and  as  much  force  in  pub- 
lic sentiment  in  Britain  as  in  the  United  States. 
Indeed,  when  I  see  the  array  of  talent,  of  in- 
tellectual brilliancy  and  administrative  capacity 
that  openly  in  Britain  preaches  and  practises 
the  doctrines  of  liberalism — I  mean  which 
frankly  and  fairly  believes  that  the  masses  of 
men  must  be  trusted  and  that  their  judgments, 
though  not  unerring,  are  the  surest  and  safest 
guides  to  human  betterment, — when  I  see  the 
stern  determination  of  Britain  and  her  readi- 
ness to  sacrifice  her  life  for  the  maintenance  of 
democracy  in  the  world,  I  feel  that  comparison 
of  formal  institutions  is,  at  least,  for  the  pres- 
ent, odious. 

In  our  view  of  British  history  in  the  last  hun- 
dred years,  let  us  briefly  consider  a  few  other 
things.  Britain  during  these  years  has  been,  in 
Europe  as  a  whole,  a  force  making  for  liberal- 
ism beyond  its  own  borders.  I  know  there  are 
dark  spots  in  British  history  during  that  time ; 
I  know  there  were  many  occasions  when  her  for- 
eign policies  were  shaped  by  crude  materialistic 
needs  of  her  own  empire ;  I  know  too  that,  when 
I  make  this  charge,  I  almost  repent  my  making 


BRITISH-AMERICAN  RELATIONS      TI 

it,  because  the  fact  is  preeminently  growth  from 
the  old  materialistic  imperialism  toward  human 
leadership  and  obligation.  But  if  we  look  at 
any  single  liberal  movement  on  the  continent  of 
Europe  from  1820  to  1914,  what  do  we  find? 
Well,  we  find  in  most  of  them  Britain's  foreign 
policy  and  her  domestic  spirit  in  sympathy  with 
democratic  development ;  we  find  the  nations  of 
Europe  as  they  advanced  away  from  autocracy 
imitating  English  institutions ;  we  find  the  wide 
acceptance  of  the  principle  of  ministerial  re- 
sponsibility and  Germany  the  only  nation  of 
importance  that  has  not  accepted  the  practise, 
except  where  the  American  system  of  provi- 
dential government  has  been  adopted.  Save 
America,  no  other  country  was  so  much  an  in- 
spiration to  the  restless  and  hopeless  populace 
of  the  continent  during  the  half  century  between 
the  death  of  George  III.  and  the  unification  of 
Italy. 

Suppose  one  should  ask  the  struggling  lead- 
ers of  democratic  purpose  on  the  continent  dur- 
ing those  fateful  years,  when  Greece  obtained 
her  independence,  when  country  after  country 
received  written  constitutions,  when  Italy  threw 
off  the  odious  and  terrible  yoke  of  Austria,  when 
even  German  states  put  on  the  seemings  of  pop- 
ular government  by  receiving  gifts  of  constitu- 


72  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

tions  handed  down  by  monarchs, — suppose  we 
should  ask  those  leaders  where  they  expected  in 
their  contests  to  discover  understanding  and 
popular  sympathy.  Do  you  think  they  turned 
to  Berlin,  Vienna  and  Constantinople?  Did 
Mazzini  and  Cavour  and  Garibaldi  think  of  Lon- 
don or  Berlin  as  a  source  of  hope  and  consola- 
tion ?  The  simple  truth  is  that  Englishmen  had 
established  in  the  seventeenth  century  the 
fundamentals  of  the  principles  of  free  govern- 
ment which  the  men  of  Europe  craved  in  the 
nineteenth ;  the  truth  is  that  Englishmen  nearly 
three  centuries  ago  cast  into  the  muck  heap  the 
whole  theory  of  divine  right  of  kings  of  which 
William  Hohenzollern  still  swaggeringly  boasts. 
On  the  whole,  if  we  put  to  one  side  the  fact  that 
Britain  herself  was  moving  on  to  a  fuller  reali- 
zation of  popular  will  in  Government,  the  glar- 
ing truth  is  simply  and  concretely  that  dis- 
tressed democrats  and  political  refugees  fled  to 
London  for  breath  and  to  gather  new  courage. 

Suppose  we  should  select  the  years  from,  let 
us  say,  1840  to  1865.  Was  Britain  worse  than 
other  nations,  or  was  she  better?  I  select  the 
years  of  Palmerstonian  flamboyancy,  the  years 
of  the  Opium  war  and  the  Crimea.  Years  of 
blunder  and  wrong-doing,  in  which  Britain,  how- 
ever, was  undergoing  a  change  of  soul  under  the 


BRITISH-AMERICAN  RELATIONS      73 

hammering  logic  of  Cobden  and  the  spell  of 
John  Bright 's  lofty  eloquence.  Compare 
Britain  in  the  mid  century  with  Prussia,  with 
France  of  the  third  empire  under  Louis,  the  his- 
trionic, with  the  dreary  states  of  Italy, — remem- 
bering what  Gladstone  said  of  Naples,  that  it 
had  raised  a  denial  of  God  into  a  principle  of 
government — with  Austria  practising  the  policy 
and  creed  of  Metternich  and  squeezing  in  her 
hard  hand  the  peoples  of  northern  Italy,  with 
America  enforcing  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law,  is- 
suing the  Ostend  Manifesto,  announcing  the 
Dred  Scott  decision,  and  ready  to  enter  the  mess 
of  Congressional  Reconstruction. 

There  may  be  in  America  still  some  persons 
who  cherish  ill-will  against  Britain  because  of 
her  conduct  during  our  Civil  War.  In  part  this 
feeling  is  a  relic  of  the  indignation  of  the  North 
because  of  the  Alabama  trouble,  because  Eng- 
land sent  munitions  to  the  South,  because  she 
quickly  acknowledged  the  belligerency  of  the 
Confederacy.  But  it  is  high  time  that  we  saw 
these  things  aright.  1st,  The  only  fault  in  ac- 
knowledging belligerency  was,  if  fault  at  all,  in 
the  haste  with  which  it  was  done ;  2nd,  We  are 
in  no  situation  to  throw  stones  at  England  for 
exercising  the  privilege  of  a  neutral  to  ship  mu- 
nitions to  a  belligerent;  3rd,  While  the  Alabama 


74  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

matter  was  trying,  Britain  paid  the  damages 
settled  by  a  court  of  arbitration.  Again,  North- 
ern men  who  lived  through  the  Civil  War  were 
tried  by  England  ^s  apparent  sympathy  with  the 
South,  when  they  had  expected  that  the  official 
opinion  there  would  support  the  North.  The 
story  is  a  long  and  exceedingly  interesting  one ; 
can  I  put  the  essential  truth  in  a  few  words! 
The  suspicion  and  jealousies  produced  by  old 
controversies  had  not  died  down  by  1860.  For 
some  time  past,  America  had  been  grasping  and 
apparently  imperialistic,  with  a  more  than  Brit- 
ish imperialism,  for  she  had  taken  Texas  and 
California  and  other  portions  of  the  great  west 
and  had  looked  with  more  than  platonic  affec- 
tion on  Central  America  and  Cuba.  For  all  this 
we  can  offer  excuse  or  palliation,  but  it  in  part 
accounts  for  British  feeling  toward  us.  To  the 
average  Briton,  the  whole  United  States  was 
blackened  with  slavery ;  and,  forgetting  that  his 
own  country  during  the  eighteenth  century  had 
reveled  in  the  profits  of  the  slave-trade,  he 
looked  with  undue  pride  on  the  really  noble  part 
his  country  had  been  playing  for  a  generation 
in  the  movement  toward  the  liberation  of  the 
black.  But  most  fundamental  of  all,  America 
was  not  loved  but  suspected  by  the  conservative 
classes,  instinctively  suspected;  a  more  or  less 


BRITISH-AMERICAN  RELATIONS      75 

conscious  effort  had  been  made  for  two  genera- 
tions to  slur  America,  which  was  giving, — the 
governing  classes  strove  to  believe, — a  lesson  to 
the  world  in  the  noxious  effects  of  unrestricted 
democracy.  In  the  light  of  all  these  things,  it 
was  natural  that  the  British  government,  still 
largely  in  the  hands  of  a  small  governing  class, 
should  not  instantly  sympathize  with  the  North. 
But  we  must  go  a  little  further  in  our  study. 
As  we  do  so,  we  shall  see  the  American  Civil 
War — like  the  Revolution — a  crisis  and  a  step 
forward  in  British  history.  We  generally  think 
of  that  struggle  as  ours.  It  most  decidedly  was 
not  ours  alone.  During  the  earlier  years  of  the 
war,  pressure  was  brought  on  the  British  gov- 
ernment to  recognize  the  Confederacy  as  an  in- 
dependent nation  and  even  to  intervene;  the 
government  had  too  much  sense.  Blind  as  it 
may  have  been,  it  could  not  make  that  serious 
and  gross  error,  though  Gladstone,  a  member  of 
the  cabinet,  in  a  well-known  speech,  spoke  of 
the  South  as  a  new  nation  made  by  Jefferson 
Davis,  and  lived  to  make  open  humble  acknowl- 
edgment of  his  unspeakable  and  tactless  blun- 
der. When  once  it  was  clearly  seen  by  the  Brit- 
ish people  that  the  contest  in  America  was  ac- 
tually one  between  slavery  and  free  labor,  the 
government,  had  it  so  desired,  dared  not  ac- 


76  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

knowledge  Southern  independence.  Those  were 
very  trying  days  for  England.  The  blockade  of 
our  southern  ports  cut  off  the  supply  of  cotton 
for  her  factories.  Men  were  thrown  out  of  work, 
thousands  and  tens  of  thousands  faced  starva- 
tion, but  the  clear-eyed  cotton  operatives  in- 
stinctively grasped  the  truth;  suffer  as  they 
might,  no  government  that  was  theirs  should  be 
allowed  to  cast  in  its  lot  with  a  confederacy  of 
states  which  recognized  the  right  of  capital  to 
own  labor,  of  the  employer  to  own  the  body  of 
the  laborer.  We  now  see  how  much  of  human 
destiny  lay  in  the  hands  of  those  simple  British 
workmen.  Fortunately  ere  long  they  saw  the 
principles  of  public  and  human  faith  incarnated 
in  the  person  of  a  great  American,  a  rugged 
homely  son  of  the  soil,  who  was  raised  by  char- 
acter from  poverty  and  obscurity  to  the  highest 
position  in  a  democratic  republic.  To  these  sim- 
ple working  men  Lincoln  wrote  with  his  own 
hand  a  straightforward,  uncondescending,  man- 
to-man  letter,  acknowledging  their  distresses 
and  assuring  them  of  his  faith  in  their  sense  of 
justice. 

If  we  must  select  one  cardinal  fact,  one  great 
illuminating  incident  in  British  history  and 
Anglo-American  relations,  we  should  select  this 
strangely  daring  disregard  of  diplomatic  prece- 


BRITISH-AMERICAN  RELATIONS       77 

dent  and  ritual.  We  should  see  the  President  of 
thirty  million  people  making  a  direct,  frank, 
simple  statement  to  the  people  of  another  na- 
tion, a  people  as  yet  inadequate  participants  in 
their  own  government.  We  should  point  out  the 
fact  that  Lincoln  knew  that  peace  and  good  un- 
derstanding must  rest  on  the  sober  judgment  of 
common  men  and  that  governmental  methods 
must  not  corrupt  the  cordiality  of  plain  human 
beings  whose  interests  must  be  in  their  elements 
identical.  We  need  not  wonder  then  that  the 
men  of  Britain  to-day  quote  Abraham  Lincoln 
more  freely  than  they  do  their  own  statesmen; 
for  whom  ought  they  to  quote  but  Lincoln  and 
Edmund  Burke  1  And  we  need  not  wonder,  but 
admire,  when  we  find  the  President  of  the 
United  States  to-day  concerning  himself  with 
the  masses  of  the  people  of  Europe,  who  can 
obtain  nothing  but  vitiation  of  their  own  lives 
from  the  strengthening  of  aristocratic  militar- 
ism and  the  crushing  of  neighboring  democ- 
racies. 

When  did  Great  Britain  become  the  friend  of 
America?  Its  real  friendship  began  when,  in 
August,  1867,  Parliament  passed  the  second  re- 
form bill  and  England  became  a  democracy.  It 
would  be  difficult  probably  to  over-emphasize 
the  impression  made  on  the  mind  and  spirit  of 


78  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

Britain  by  the  death  of  Lincoln.  The  tragedy 
made  men  stop  and  ponder;  his  life  and  death 
shattered  at  one  blow  the  argument  that  sagac- 
ity in  high  places  of  state  rested  only  with  men 
of  superior  station  and  of  aristocratic  tradition. 
A  great  democracy  had  weathered  a  storm  in 
which  certain  elements  in  the  governing  classes 
of  Europe  had  expected  to  see  it  founder ;  mis- 
takes had  been  made,  but  democracy  had  shown 
staying  power,  faith,  determination  and  respect 
for  law.  The  writer  in  Punch  who  lampooned 
Lincoln  in  the  days  of  distress  and  trial  openly 
confessed  his  error: 

Yes,  he  lived  to  shame  me  from  my  sneer, 
To  lame  my  pencil  and  confute  my  pen — 

To  make  me  own  this  hind  of  princes  peer, 
This  rail-splitter  a  true  born  king  of  men. 

How  can  we  doubt  that  this  lesson  struck 
home  to  the  millions  and  shook  to  the  base  that 
old  doctrine  which  England,  free  as  she  was,  had 
not  as  yet  discarded,  that  men  of  a  restricted 
class  must  hold  in  their  hands  the  government 
of  a  nation. 

Thus  far  I  have  rapidly  presented  a  few  ele- 
mentary facts.  By  strict  adherence  to  history  I 
have  sought  to  show  how  Britain  has  gradually 
become  democratic  like  the  States  that  were  once 
her  colonies.    To-day  no  people  see  more  clearly 


BRITISH-AMERICAN  RELATIONS      79 

than  the  Britisli  people  that  this  war  is  not  only 
a  democratic  but  a  democratizing  war,  a  war 
which  must,  it  seems,  unless  arrogant  German}^ 
prevail  (as  prevail  she  must  not  and  cannot), 
bring  into  working  relations  the  people  of  many 
nations  and  build  peace  and  progress  on  the  es- 
sential every-day  needs  and  impulses  of  the 
plain  people.  Unless  we  Americans  are  false  to 
our  history  and  false  to  what  we  suppose  we  are, 
surely  there  is  nothing  strange  but  only  every- 
thing inevitable  in  our  standing  by  the  side  of 
Great  Britain,  the  mother  of  modern  constitu- 
tional liberty. 

Now,  what  of  the  future?  Dare  one  venture 
to  look  ahead"?  This  war  must  democratize  the 
political  world,  though  it  would  be  folly  to  ex- 
pect either  complete  and  immediate  alteration 
in  foreign  affairs,  or  complete  internal  peace. 
There  are  to  be  difficult  tests  of  industrial,  so- 
cial and  political  readjustment.  The  effects  of 
the  war  must  be  far-reaching.  The  war  now  en- 
circles the  globe;  no  group  of  people  is  so  re- 
mote that  it  has  not  been  furnished  with  the 
ideals  of  democracy  and  of  militaristic  imperial- 
ism. Hundreds  of  millions  of  men  have  seen 
and  heard  and  thought.  To  some  men,  it  is  true, 
the  war  appears  to  have  taught  only  that  we 
must  prepare  for  another;  to  some  men  the  chief 


80  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

lesson  seems  to  be  that  we  must  buckle  on  our 
industrial  armor  to  meet  tbe  organized  industry 
of  other  nations;  they  look  forward  to  super- 
organized,  politically  fostered  and  government- 
ally  supervised  industrial  competition  between 
great  peoples,  not  seeing  that  Germany's  greed 
under  governmental  supervision  brought  on  this 
terrible  agony  of  war,  not  seeing  that  peace  and 
friendliness  between  nations  is  almost  incon- 
ceivable under  a  regime  which  Germany's  com- 
mercial policies  so  adequately  presented  to  the 
world,  not  seeing  even  that  the  forces  of  mod- 
ern society  for  fifty  years  have  really,  in  spite 
of  certain  evidences  of  rampant  nationalism, 
been  breaking  down  the  isolation  of  nations  un- 
til publicists  are  almost  ready  to  throw  over- 
board the  rigid  conception  of  national  sove- 
reignty which  accepts  no  exterior  superstate 
compulsion,  not  seeing  that  industrial  and  com- 
mercial enterprise  is  not  and  cannot  be  totally 
national  and  that  actual  unity  of  interest  is  an 
economic  necessity  and  a  real  fact  which  is  vio- 
lently disregarded  by  artificial  national  regula- 
tions and  interferences.  The  truth  is  that  po- 
litical nationalism  to  a  large  extent  belies  inter- 
national reality,  and  patriotism  is  not  enough. 
We  may  well  question  whether,  by  a  strange  re- 
vival of  currents,  we  must  go  to  British  work- 


BRITISH-AMERICAN  RELATIONS      81 

ing  men  to  gather  now  what  Lincoln  called  a 
new  birth  of  freedom?  But  surely  we  all  see 
that  peace,  prosperity  and  progress  must  de- 
pend on  the  spread  and  the  realization  of  a 
deeper  and  cleaner  civilization ;  and  this  we  hope 
for  out  of  the  mire  and  the  cruelty  of  war. 
Peace  and  prosperity  and  progress  depend  on 
the  people  of  one  nation's  knowing  and  under- 
standing the  character  and  the  essential  interest 
of  others. 

Let  us  hope  that  thinking  men  see  and  feel 
that  patriotism  is  not  enough.  If  after  this 
war  one  great  body  of  my  countrymen  or  of 
yours,  believes  persistently  in  seclusive  nation- 
alism, they  will  be  forced  by  the  rest  who  believe 
in  rational  internationalism.  I  know  that  inter- 
national socialism  broke  down  under  the  impact 
of  militarism  and  deceit,  and  I  am  not  advo- 
cating socialism ;  I  am  not  decrying  decent  open- 
minded  patriotism.  I  am  saying  that  patriotism 
is  not  enough;  I  am  saying  that  we  belie  the 
times,  we  do  not  see  what  the  man  in  the  work- 
shop feels,  we  are  blind  to  the  humanizing  ef- 
fect of  this  horribly  unhuman  war,  if  we  think 
we  can  or  should  proceed  to  draw  a  line  through 
the  Atlantic  ocean  and  recognize  the  political 
fact  of  the  American  republic  and  the  political 
facts  of  British  and  French  states  as  the  only 


82  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

existing  realities.  My  conviction  is  that  if  the 
upper  classes,  the  educated  and  book-reading 
classes,  cherish  the  principles  of  patriotic  ex- 
clusive nationalism  and  nourish  the  idea  that 
the  state  is  the  only  reality  deserving  devotion, 
they  will  cut  themselves  off  from  the  impulses 
of  the  masses  of  working  people  who  are  not 
devoted  to  national  aggrandizement  or  national 
glory,  and  who  take,  perhaps,  lamentably  little 
pride  in  purely  national  grandeur,  but  have  a 
deep  feeling  for  the  necessity  of  human  rights 
and  human  progress.  As  far  as  international- 
ism is  possible  and  sound  and  righteous,  I  do 
not  like  to  imagine  that  it  is  to  be  the  possession 
of  the  unlettered  alone,  or  that  those  having  po- 
litical authority,  education,  and  economic  well- 
being  will  also  not  see  the  truth.  In  my  judg- 
ment, we  must  look  out  and  beyond  and  realize 
that  this  war  has  brought  millions  of  men  to 
speak  in  the  terms,  not  of  national  aggrandize- 
ment, but  of  human  rights.^ 

As  I  say  all  this,  I  pause  in  fear.  The  war 
can  raise  democracy  to  a  new  level ;  the  war  can 

*  In  these  days,  when  the  failure  of  German  socialism  to 
live  up  to  its  theories  is  so  clear,  there  is  strong  feeling  in  the 
minds  of  many  men  against  internationalism  because  the  word 
had  been  the  plaything  of  the  Socialists.  I  hold  no  brief  for 
socialistic  internationalism.  I  simply  maintain  that  the  inter- 
ests of  the  world  are  too  nearly  one  to  endure  grasping  and 
essentially  selfish  and  self-centered  patriotism. 


BRITISH-AMERICAN  RELATIONS      83 

banish  narrow-souled,  mole-eyed  provincialism ; 
the  war  can  bring  in  new  life  and  hope  for  men 
who  fain  would  live  in  friendliness,  nnthreat- 
ened  and  unafraid,  only  if  Germany  is  beaten, 
or  if  she  beats  with  her  own  recreated  better 
self  the  foul  spirit  of  militaristic  despotism 
which  menaces  the  world  and  sears  her  own  soul. 
And  so  let  us  not  look  too  brightly  forward; 
first  let  us  win  on  the  battle  field  our  right  to 
live  in  friendliness  in  a  world  of  peace. 

There  is  no  complete  wisdom  in  our  fondling 
our  hopes  with  overmuch  assurance.  There 
are  some  things  which  we  might  as  well  look  in 
the  face.  Half  a  century  ago  Prussia  cast  Aus- 
tria out  of  Germany — I  was  about  to  say  out  of 
Europe — and  bade  her  be  content  with  her  job, 
which  in  faith  was  big  enough,  of  holding  and 
ruling  various  uneasy  nationalities  in  the  Eu- 
ropean east.  It  is  only  an  exaggeration  to 
think  of  Austria-Hungary  as  an  oriental  state, 
though  she  did  not  extend  her  dominion  and 
exercise  her  power  totally  by  Asiatic  methods. 
To-day  Germany  has  subjected  Austria;  and 
Germany  reaches  out  and  beyond — across  Bul- 
garia and  Turkey  on  into  Mesopotamia,  and 
over  the  territory  of  Western  Russia.  The  na- 
tions that  stand  in  her  way  are  to  be  crushed 
out  or  submerged,  if  Pan-Germanism  has  its 


84  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

will.  Some  of  the  appearances  of  sovereignty 
and  independence  may  remain  in  the  semi-vas- 
sal states  that  now  are  her  allies.  On  the  other 
hand,  those  nationalities  of  the  near  east  claim- 
ing a  right  to  think  and  live  independently  can 
take  their  choice :  either  be  expatriated,  driven 
into  the  open  places  of  North  Africa,  or  become 
the  hewers  of  wood  and  the  drawers  of  water 
for  the  lords  of  the  new  vast  domain  with  its 
headquarters  in  Potsdam. 

The  principles  on  which  the  new  imperium  is 
to  rest  I  call  oriental,  not  European.  You  may 
say  I  exaggerate ;  possibly  I  do.  You  may  say 
all  Germany  wants  is  economic  opportunity  and 
a  corridor  to  the  east ;  I  hope  that  is  all.  I  hope 
I  am  wrong  if  I  see  Germany  cutting  herself  off 
from  Europe  and  setting  up  an  Asiatic  im- 
perium. I  am,  moreover,  willing,  nay,  anxious, 
to  admit  that  this  new  antique  Asiatic  despot- 
ism, if  established,  would  find  hard  work  in  over- 
coming the  tendencies  of  democracy  and  over- 
coming the  life  and  the  spirit  of  the  subject  na- 
tions. But  you  know,  that  the  military  clique, 
the  present  masters  of  Germany,  intend  to  be 
the  rulers  in  reality  of  that  vast  dominion,  and 
that  in  their  opposition  to  any  sentimental  re- 
gard for  oppressed  nationalities  they  are  fer- 
vently bitter.     You  know  that  they  have  de- 


BRITISH-AMERICAN  RELATIONS       85 

veloped  a  political  and  social  philosophy  which 
sanctifies  conquest  and  deifies  tyranny.  You 
know  they  are  at  least  partly  responsible  for 
Armenian  extermination,  and  probably  for  the 
process  of  annihilation  now  in  progress  in  Ser- 
bia. You  know  that  some  hundreds  of  pro- 
fessors have  signed  a  document  which  not  only 
justifies  conquest  but  denies  the  right  of  the 
conquered  people  to  any  share  in  the  govern- 
ment of  the  empire.  You  know  that  this  process 
of  expansion  will  necessarily  be  based  on  brute 
force  and  be  saturated  with  the  most  vulgar  ma- 
terialism, and  that  the  dominion  must  develop 
all  of  the  most  odious  processes  of  imperialism 
because  its  purpose  is  to  hold  subject  nations 
in  a  condition  of  servitude.  You  know  that 
there  are  or  have  been  two  parties  in  Germany, 
one  determined  by  hook  or  by  crook  to  acquire 
an  eastern  imperium,  the  other  hanging  on  to 
the  Occident  and  still  hoping  not  to  be  estranged 
entirely  from  the  west  in  policy,  politics,  or 
economy.  You  know  that  just  now  the  eastern 
party  holds  the  whip  hand.  Let  us  pray  that 
it  is  riding  to  a  fall. 

In  1913  a  colleague  of  mine  heard  a  concourse 
of  intellectual  people  in  Berlin  applaud  with  en- 
thusiasm an  orator — a  professor,  I  believe — 
who  announced  his  abhorrence  for  ParlmneM- 


86  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

tismuSj  Presse,  and  PoeheL  Parliamentary  gov- 
ernment, the  newspaper  and  the  populace,  these 
are  the  foundations  of  occidental  civilization. 
Can  any  one  doubt  that  Germany  stands  at  the 
parting  of  the  ways,  or  is  already  well  along  tO' 
orientalism,  lured  like  the  seaman  of  old  by  the 
riches  of  Araby  and  India  I 

Well,  suppose  one  small  portion  of  this  comes 
true — suppose  Germany  holds  in  her  grip  west- 
em  Russia  and  reaches  out  from  Potsdam  that 
mailed  fist  to  squeeze  her  vassals  in  the  near 
east  and  Asia  Minor,  where  shall  America 
stand!  With  what  is  left  of  occidentalism  in 
Europe?  Or  shall  we  say  it  is  no  concern  of 
ours;  France  can  rebuild  her  own  villages,  if 
she  can  find  the  fragments ;  and  as  for  England, 
what  have  we  to  do  with  the  creator  of  parlia- 
mentary government?  Plainly  enough,  in  the 
presence  of  defeat  or  of  victim,  the  English- 
speaking  peoples  must  defend  and  build  up  the 
principles  of  occidental  civilization. 

All  this,  you  may  say,  is  but  a  nightmare. 
Possibly  there  is  no  foundation  for  fear.  And 
by  referring  to  Pan-Germanism  as  oriental,  one 
may  appear  to  do  injustice  to  the  orient,  for  the 
present  orient  has  been  quickened  by  occidental 
liberty.  I  would  not  for  the  world  cast  asper- 
sions on  Japan,  in  whose  intelligence  and  out- 


BRITISH-AMERICAN  RELATIONS       87 

look  I  have  faith.  I  mean  the  ancient  oriental- 
ism. I  mean  those  tenets  and  principles  of  do- 
minion and  of  empire-building  which  the  old 
faded  empires  followed.  To  call  the  doctrines 
of  Pan-Germanism  medieval  would  be  the  gross- 
est flattery.  Pan-Germanism  may  fail,  beaten 
in  Germany  itself,  too  retroactive,  too  much 
out  of  joint,  to  stand  the  normal  repulsions  of 
conscientious  decency.  But  it  is  the  domineer- 
ing Pan-German  whom  we  face, — there  is  the 
alternative:  between  occidentalism  and  the  old 
tawdry  empires  of  cruelty  and  despotism. 

If  this  war  ends  with  armaments  undimin- 
ished, with  alliances  that  are  practically  great 
Roman  empires  bristling  with  bayonets,  if  an- 
cient orientalism  stalks  abroad  in  Europe,  where 
is  America  to  stand!  Alone?  Are  we  to  fear 
Britain  on  our  northern  border  and  take  respon- 
sibility for  the  restless  republics  southward  to 
the  Horn  ?  ^  If  the  war  ends  in  hostility  and 
preparedness  between  nations — which  may  God 
forbid — can  there  be  anything  wiser  than  the 
actual  structure  by  cooperation  of  the  *^  Anglo- 
Saxon  block,'*  which  Germany  had  determined 
to  demolish?     If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  war 

*  By  this  is  not  meant  that  America  must  under  all  circum- 
stances take  responsibility  for  Central  and  South  America,  but 
that  in  an  armed  world  responsibility  of  a  semi-military  char- 
acter may  be  a  necessity. 


88  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

ends  witli  a  peace  of  peoples,  the  responsibility 
rests  with  Britain  and  America  in  friendly  co- 
operation to  make  it  real  and  abiding.  I  want 
to  preach  a  community  of  responsibility  which, 
if  it  be  real,  if  it  be  democratic,  if  it  be  whole- 
some, must  rest  on  generosity  and  freedom,  not 
on  dictation.  History  would  seem  to  offer  some 
hope  that  the  principles  of  liberalism  which 
Britain  has  displayed  on  an  imperial  scale,  may 
be  the  cement  of  nations,  the  binding  principle 
of  international  good  fellowship  as  it  has  been 
of  empire,  and  that  the  ethics  of  democracy, 
which  have  been  so  eloquently  spoken  by  Presi- 
dent Wilson,  may  be  accepted  as  the  basis  of  a 
peaceful  world. 

Irrespective  of  all  identity  of  interest  because 
of  common  origins,  one  simple  hard  fact  stands 
plainly  before  us.  Britain  is  the  nation  with 
which  America  has  the  most  intimate  physical 
relations,  the  territory  of  one  great  common- 
wealth of  the  Empire  borders  ours  on  the  north 
for  three  thousand  miles.  Moreover,  in  the 
Caribbean  Sea  there  are  extensive  British  pos- 
sessions and  strong  outposts  for  the  British 
navy.  Her  interests  there  demand  protection, 
especially  so  if  we  also  consider  that  the  canal 
route  is  for  her  and  her  constituent  common- 
wealths a  matter  of  much  consequence.     The 


BRITISH-AMERICAN  RELATIONS      89 

two  nations  may  watch  each  other  suspiciously 
and  stand  ready  to  attribute  every  word  or  act 
as  evidence  of  greed  and  hostility ;  or  they  may 
see  that  the  interests  of  the  two  peoples  are  in- 
timate and  mutually  supporting.  For  America 
and  England  to  quarrel  over  the  conditions  and 
prospects  in  the  Caribbean  would  be  the  apoth- 
eosis of  folly ;  nothing  contributory  to  the  actual 
benefit  of  either  could  be  detrimental  to  the  in- 
terests of  the  other.  Both  are  interested  in  a 
free  open  canal;  both  are  really  interested  in 
the  prosperity  and  productivity  of  the  region. 
It  is  more  than  possible,  however,  that  sus- 
picions may  arise  and  wax  into  hostilities;  if 
they  do,  it  will  be  because  one  nation  or  both  act 
and  appear  to  act  on  the  old  basis  of  selfishness, 
a  selfishness  which  will  not  in  actuality  be  self- 
interest,  but  short-sightedness.  If  they  do  not 
become  enemies,  it  will  be  because  the  peoples 
abandon  the  old-time  futile  and  senseless  idea 
that,  for  economic  profit  and  for  a  vague  thing 
called  patriotic  grandeur  and  glory,  political 
domination  and  possession  are  necessary.  Ger- 
many's economic  progress  and  intellectual  in- 
fluence, great  as  they  were,  might  have  been 
much  greater,  had  she  abandoned,  instead  of  ag- 
gressively worshipping  the  idol  of  political 
overlordship  and  the  forcible  extension  of  her 


90  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

authority.  Has  this  great  war  disclosed  to  ns 
the  fact  that  such  mistaken  ideas  are  destructive 
of  civilization  and  are  a  relic  of  the  time  when 
the  glory  of  a  monarch  and  his  riches  depended 
on  the  extent  of  his  dominions  and  on  the  num- 
ber from  whom  he  could  extort  taxes  and  raise 
soldiers?  Certainly  to  a  very  great  extent  the 
peace  and  good  understanding  between  Britain 
and  America  depend  on  a  frank,  open-hearted 
and  intelligent  recognition  of  the  mutuality  of 
interests  in  the  Western  Hemisphere. 

President  Wilson  has  proposed  no  less  idea 
than  the  establishment  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine 
of  the  world.  What  does  that  mean?  It  means, 
not  British  or  American  or  Anglo-Saxon  im- 
perialistic control,  but  the  right  of  a  nation  to 
live  freely  and  to  be  protected  from  political  and 
industrial  exploitation.  It  means  that  the 
stronger  must  help  and  protect,  not  dominate 
and  exhaust,  the  weak.  It  means  all  possible 
emphasis  on  the  friendliness  of  nations  and  the 
community  of  interests.  But  it  does  not  mean 
isolation  and  contrariety;  it  cannot  and  should 
not  mean  spheres  of  influence,  by  which  is  meant 
places  for  economic  manipulation ;  it  means  self- 
determination,  but  not  seclusion  or  exclusion. 

If  Great  Britain  and  America,  acting  in  this 
spirit,  striving  to  give  expression  and  greater 


BRITISH-AMERICAN  RELATIONS      91 

reality  to  actual  international  solidarity,  can 
create  the  Monroe  Doctrine  of  the  world,  then 
all  past  achievements  will  seem  as  tinsel,  save 
as  they  prepared  that  consummation.  Let  no 
one  cite  history  to  refute  me.  History,  which 
is  not  a  basket  of  pebbles  but  a  course  of  hu- 
man growth,  never  before  saw  a  world  of  men 
crushed  by  the  same  weight  of  anxiety,  think- 
ing the  same  thoughts,  reading  the  same  news. 
Until  some  fifty  years  ago  this  earth  had  not 
seen  hundreds  of  millions  of  men  and  women 
that  could  even  read  and  write.  I  do  not  expect 
the  millennium;  but  I  do  expect  a  changed 
world,  and  I  do  expect  that  the  English-speak- 
ing peoples,  with  no  sense  of  superior  and  ex- 
clusive culture,  but  with  a  profound  conviction 
of  duty  growing  out  of  their  own  past,  will  unite 
in  feeling  and  in  interest  to  play  an  honorable, 
helpful  and  civilizing  role  in  the  world  at  large. 
**This  ideal  of  an  organized,  free  coopera- 
tive basis  for  the  future  Society  of  Nations, 
which  would  have  appeared  chimerical  before 
the  war,  is  so  no  longer,  though  many  genera- 
tions will  elapse  before  it  will  be  in  full  work- 
ing order.  The  interesting  point  is  that  in  the 
British  Empire,  which  I  prefer  to  call  (from  its 
principal  state)  the  British  Commonwealth  of 
Nations,  this  transition  from  the  old  legalistic 


92  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

idea  of  political  sovereignty  based  on  force,  to 
the  new  social  idea  of  constitutional  freedom, 
based  on  consent,  has  been  gradually  evolving 
for  more  than  a  century.  And  the  elements  of 
the  future  world  Government,  which  will  no 
longer  rest  on  the  imperial  ideas  adopted  from 
the  Roman  law,  are  already  in  operation  in  our 
commonwealth  of  nations  and  will  rapidly  de- 
velop in  the  near  future.  As  the  Roman  ideas 
guided  European  civilization  for  almost  two 
thousand  years,  so  the  newer  ideas  embedded 
in  the  British  constitutional  and  colonial  system 
may,  when  carried  to  their  full  development, 
guide  the  future  civilization  for  ages  to  come." 
Who  spoke  those  words!  Some  book-read 
philosophic  dreamer,  carefully  shielded  from 
harsh  reality?  Some  wordy  British  orator, 
seeking  to  exalt  and  magnify  political  authority 
and  split  the  ears  of  the  groundlings?  Some 
self-satisfied  islander,  boasting  of  insular 
achievement?  None  of  these,  but  a  general, 
openly  acknowledged  as  skillful,  brave  and  re- 
sourceful ;  not  a  Briton  at  all,  but  a  Boer,  who 
less  than  twenty  years  ago  was  leading  the 
armies  of  the  Transvaal  against  the  armies  of 
Britain;  not  an  orator  by  profession,  but  a  man 
of  affairs,  who,  having  crushed  the  German 
armies  in  Africa,  came  to  England  as  the  repre- 


BRITISH-AMERICAN  RELATIONS      93 

sentative  of  free  South  Africa  to  consult  on  the 
needs  and  duties  of  the  empire. 

General  Smuts  of  South  Africa,  resting  his 
hope  on  what  has  been  done,  looks  forward  to 
a  world  built  on  the  principle  of  cooperation 
and  freedom.  This  is  democracy  as  a  principle 
of  world  order;  the  principle  of  self -develop- 
ment strengthened  by  companionship.  This  is 
an  extension  of  the  spirit  of  democracy  till  it 
forms  the  essence  of  international  relationship. 
Will  any  of  us  cynically  hold  back  and  deny 
our  own  selves  in  the  wider  currents  of  the 
world?  Those  that  think  it  all  a  dream  may  be 
right;  but  please  do  not  quote  history  to  estab- 
lish your  position.  Only  a  few  decades  ago  this 
world  was  a  serf -holding,  slave-holding,  slave- 
trading  world.  Only  two  centuries  or  so  ago 
religious  liberty  was  almost  unknown,  and  the 
claims  for  its  acceptance  were  considered  blas- 
phemous immorality.^  The  mills  of  the  gods  do 
not  always  grind  slowly. 

*  It  is  quite  impossible  of  course  to  say  where  the  principle 
of  religious  liberty  was  adopted  in  the  New  World  or  the  Old. 
No  one  would  venture  to  say  before  1650,  and  it  might  be  safer 
even  for  America  to  say  the  last  quarter  of  the  18th  Century. 
But  any  one  clinging  to  the  delusion  that  international  hos- 
tility built  on  a  misconception  of  actual  interest,  is  bound  to  be 
maintained  permanently  because  of  the  warring  character  of 
national  sovereignty  since  the  establishment  of  national  states, 
will  profit  by  considering  the  course  of  the  development  of 
religious  liberty. 


THE    MONROE    DOCTRINE 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE 

The  history  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine  is  a  long 
and  complicated  story.  It  is  so  because  it  con- 
tains within  itself  a  very  large  portion  of  the 
diplomatic  history  of  the  United  States.  It  is 
all  the  niore  intricate  and  intangible  because 
it  is  not  a  distinct,  clearly  defined,  legal  princi- 
ple, but  a  policy  based  on  historical  experience, 
and,  in  addition,  an  attitude  of  mind  and  a  senti- 
ment, a  sentiment  often  crudely  expressed  and 
often  doubtless  of  uncertain  significance  in  the 
mind  of  the  average  man,  but  nevertheless  very 
real  and  very  actual. 

To  understand  it  at  all  we  shall  have  to  look 
first  at  its  earlier  expression  and  its  broader 
bearing.  As  we  carry  the  story  forward  we 
shall  see,  I  think,  an  interesting  historical  proc- 
ess— to  put  it  briefly,  we  shall  see  the  breaking 
away  from  Europe  and  the  implication  and  con- 
sequence of  the  most  significant  fact,  and  in  the 
end,  after  a  hundred  and  forty  years  of  more  or 
less  complete  separation,  the  return  of  the 
United  States  to  Europe.    This  return,  however, 

97 


98  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

was  not  that  of  a  repentant  prodigal.  The 
United  States  and  a  large  portion  of  Latin 
America  have  come  to  Europe  with  power  and 
with  a  proposal  that  Europe  herself  accept  the 
principle  of  a  rejuvenated,  enlarged,  wholesome 
doctrine  still  bearing  the  name  of  the  fifth  presi- 
dent of  the  United  States. 

From  the  time  of  the  discovery  of  the  West- 
em  world  till  the  United  States  was  established 
as  a  separate  nation,  the  American  continents 
were  stakes  in  the  game  of  European  diplomacy 
and  maneuvering  for  power.  It  may  possibly 
be  unwise  to  go  as  far  as  Professor  Seeley  in 
his  fascinating  little  book.  The  Expansion  of 
England,  and  explain  all  developments  of  Brit- 
ish and  French  hostilities  from  the  accession 
of  William  and  Mary  to  the  downfall  of  Na- 
poleon as  due  to  rivalry  for  America  and  trade 
in  America ;  but  there  is  certainly  no  exaggera- 
tion in  saying  that  in  all  or  nearly  all  of  the  con- 
troversies of  western  Europe,  the  desire  for 
possessions  in  America  or  the  control  of  Amer- 
ican trade  had  a  large  share.  As  far  as  British 
history  and  British  policy  alone  are  concerned, 
this  is  notably  true  from  the  time  of  John  Haw- 
kins and  Francis  Drake. 

When  the  United  States  became  independent, 
a  change  was  wrought  in  European  politics.  The 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE  99 

territory,  covered  by  the  new  nation,  which 
reached  from  the  Atlantic  coast  westwards  to 
the  Mississippi,  was  no  longer  the  property  of 
a  European  nation;  its  development  was  no 
longer  immediately  affected  by  the  decisions  or 
the  ambitions  of  a  mother  country ;  it  could  not 
very  well  be  considered  merely  a  pawn  in  the 
play  of  European  rivalries.  This  new  nation 
might  conceivably,  if  it  so  chose,  enter  the  game 
itself  and  become  engrossed  and  entangled  in 
the  hereditary  controversies  of  Europe,  or  it 
might  hold  studiously  aloof,  refusing  to  take 
part  in  the  diplomatic  enterprises  or  antipathies 
of  the  Old  World.  But,  it  is  obvious,  if  the 
United  States  were  to  be  really  independent,  it 
must  have  the  opportunity  to  live  its  own  life, 
or — to  say  the  same  thing  in  a  different  way — 
if  it  would  lead  its  own  life  and  shape  its  own 
destiny,  it  must  keep  from  the  burdens,  the  ani- 
mosities and  the  rivalries  of  Europe.  To  the  ex- 
tent that  the  United  States  freed  itself  from  Eu- 
ropean irritations  and  limitations  it  became  in- 
dependent and  self-determining.  Such  state- 
ments appear  too  self-evident  to  need  announce- 
ment, but  they  underlie  the  history  of  the  Mon- 
roe Doctrine ;  their  acceptance  is  necessary  for 
any  proper  consideration  of  American  diplo- 
macy, and  possibly  I  should  say  of  European 


100  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

diplomacy  also.  When  European  politics  was 
no  longer  complicated  by  the  presense  of  ambi- 
tion for  American  dominion,  and  when  America 
was  cut  free  from  the  policies  of  Europe,  the 
political  world  entered  upon  a  stage  essentially 
different  from  that  in  which  it  had  been  moving 
from  the  day  when  Columbus  came  sailing  back 
out  of  the  Sea  of  Darkness  announcing  that  he 
had  found  a  new  route  to  the  riches  of  the  east.^ 
In  the  first  decade  or  two  after  our  Revolu- 
tion, there  was  insufficient  appreciation  in  Eu- 
rope of  the  fact  that  the  United  States  had  really 
become  a  distinct  nation,  and  as  a  matter  of 
fact  there  was  not  full  appreciation  in  America. 
We  were  looked  upon  as  a  sort  of  strange  out- 
cast, this  new  nation  on  a  new  continent  pre- 
tending to  put  into  practise  disagreeable  and 
wholly  illusory  principles  of  government.  It 
was  hard  for  the  Old  World  to  treat  the  upstart 
with    the    customary    superficial    courtesy    of 

^  For  the  purpose  of  making  the  position  plain,  I  have  pos- 
sibly allowed  myself  exaggeration  in  the  paragraphs  above. 
But  no  one  can  well  exaggerate  the  importance  to  the  United 
States  of  actual  separation  from  Europe  if  the  country  would 
be  really  independent.  Of  course — and  this  thought  follows 
naturally  in  the  pages  that  follow — the  fuller  and  more  nearly 
complete  change  came  when  the  Spanish  and  Portugese  col- 
onies in  Central  and  South  America  became  independent,  and 
when  the  United  States  asserted  that  those  states  too  were 
free  from  the  policies  of  Europe  and  from  the  intrigues  of 
European  diplomacy.  One  of  the  most  telling  and  eloquent 
passages  in  the  speeches  of  Richard  Cobden  presents  the  benef- 
icent effect  on  Europe  of  the  freedom  of  America. 


THE  MONROE  DOCTBlNE         101 

studied  diplomacy.  Even  America  was  shaken 
for  years  by  contentions  growing  ont  of  Euro- 
pean politics  and  did  not  immediately  slough 
off  the  sense  of  colonialism.  Washington,  as 
usual  looking  facts  full  in  the  face,  saw  the  sim- 
ple sense  of  the  thing.  Writing  as  early  as  1788 
to  Sir  Edward  Newenham,  he  said:  *^I  hope  the 
United  States  of  America  will  be  able  to  keep 
disengaged  from  the  labyrinth  of  European  pol- 
itics and  wars.'^  John  Adams,  a  sturdy  Ameri- 
can, told  Oswald  even  in  1782  that  he  was  afraid 
of  the  new  states  being  made  tools  of  Europe. 

The  outbreak  of  the  war  between  England  and 
France  in  1783  gave  opportunity  for  an  exposi- 
tion of  American  independence ;  and  the  United 
States,  under  the  guidance  of  Washington, 
Hamilton  and  Jefferson,  took  a  position  which 
was  of  immense  consequence  for  the  succeed- 
ing years.  The  treaty  of  alliance  that  had  been 
made  with  France  some  years  before  furnished 
perplexities ;  and  France,  sending  a  Minister  to 
America,  proceeded  to  act  as  though  we  were  to 
be  used  as  she  saw  fit.  Then  it  was  that  Wash- 
ington issued  his  proclamation  of  neutrality 
which,  enlarged  by  contemporaneous  legislation, 
may  almost  be  looked  on  as  the  beginning  of 
modern  principles  of  the  duties  and  responsibili- 
ties of  neutral  nations.    Our  government  had  no 


102^         AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

intention  of  being  embroiled  in  the  European 
conflict,  though  the  people  of  the  United  States 
were  soon  divided  into  bitterly  contending  fac- 
tions known  as  the  British  and  French  factions. 
The  belief  that  we  must  stand  clear  of  Euro- 
pean entanglements,  and  must  live  our  own  life, 
soon  became  general,  however;  for  the  average 
American  felt  that  his  country  had  a  character 
and  a  purpose  different  from  that  of  the  Old 
World.  Jefferson,  writing  to  our  representative 
in  Spain  (1792),  said:  ^^With  respect  to  their 
government,  or  policy,  as  concerning  themselves 
or  other  nations,  we  wish  not  to  intermeddle  in 
word  or  deed,  and  that  it  be  not  understood  that 
our  government  permits  itself  to  entertain 
either  a  will  or  an  opinion  on  the  subject. ''  A 
short  time  later  he  wrote  to  another,  *^We  have 
a  perfect  horror  at  everything  linking  ourselves 
with  the  politics  of  Europe.''  Washington's 
Farewell  Address,  which  was  intended  in  part 
to  express  disapproval  of  factious  disturbances 
in  America,  pointed  clearly  to  the  necessity  of 
our  maintaining  ourselves  in  a  position  of  posi- 
tive independence  free  from  European  compli- 
cations :  ^*  Europe  has  a  set  of  primary  interests 
which  to  us  have  none  or  a  very  remote  relation. 
Hence  she  must  be  engaged  in  frequent  contro- 
versies, the  causes  of  which  are  essentially  for- 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         103 

eign  to  our  concerns.  .  .  .  Why  forgo  the  ad- 
vantages of  so  peculiar  a  situation?  Why  quit 
our  own  to  stand  upon  foreign  ground?  Why, 
by  interweaving  our  destiny  with  that  of  any 
part  of  Europe,  entangle  our  peace  and  pros- 
perity in  the  toils  of  European  ambition,  rival- 
ship,  interest  or  caprice/' 

''It  is  our  true  policy  to  steer  clear  of  perma- 
nent alliances  with  any  portion  of  the  foreign 
world,  so  far,  I  mean,  as  we  are  now  at  liberty 
to  do  it ;  for  let  me  not  be  understood  as  capable 
of  patronizing  infidelity  to  existing  engage- 
ments. I  hold  the  maxim  no  less  applicable  to 
public  than  to  private  affairs,  that  honesty  is 
the  best  policy.  I  repeat  it,  therefore  let  those 
engagements  be  observed  in  their  genuine  sense. 
But  in  my  opinion  it  is  unnecessary  and  would 
be  unwise  to  extend  them.*' 

If  any  one  could  be  more  explicit  on  this  sub- 
ject than  George  Washington  it  was  Thomas 
Jefferson  who  came  to  the  presidential  chair 
just  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
Washington  and  Hamilton  might  see  and  did 
see  the  wisdom,  the  practical  necessity,  of  main- 
taining America's  freedom  from  European  pol- 
icy; they  might  and  did  see  the  necessity  of 
America's    occupying   a   position   of   dignified 


104  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

aloofness.  But  to  Jefferson  this  attitude  was 
more  than  a  matter  of  calculated  wisdom;  his 
sentiments,  his  inmost  feelings,  prompted  him 
to  turn  from  Europe,  all  its  wars  and  all  its  in- 
herited problems,  policies  and  perplexities,  to 
the  new  life  of  the  young  nation  whose  destinies 
were  in  its  own  hands  and  who  could,  if  it  would, 
lead  a  life  of  freedom  and  take  advantage  of  op- 
portunities never  before  offered  a  people  to 
press  forward  toward  a  better,  simpler  and  hap- 
pier existence.  This  whole-hearted  enthusiasm 
for  the  future  America,  this  sense  of  distinct 
opportunity  and  distinct  destiny,  this  continu- 
ous consciousness  of  America's  having  broken 
away  from  the  ills  and  burdens  of  Europe,  was 
an  essential  portion  of  Jeffersonism.  No  one 
familiar  with  American  history  is  likely  to  be 
blind  to  the  influence  of  Jefferson;  but  he  was 
influential,  after  all  is  said,  because  he  embodied 
in  himself  the  native  aspirations,  the  impulses 
and  the  emotional  reactions  of  the  great  masses 
of  the  plain  people.  They  had  broken  away 
from  Europe ;  they  looked  forward  with  buoyant 
hopes;  they  looked  westward  across  the  conti- 
nent not  eastward  across  the  Atlantic.  Jeffer-) 
son's  aversion  to  what  was  essentially  Euro- 
pean was  typical ;  it  but  expressed  the  growing 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE  105 

sense  of  the  people.  The  words  of  his  first  in- 
augural address,  one  of  America's  great  state 
documents,  may  appear  naive  and  unsophisti- 
cated ;  but  Jefferson  was  neither.  He  speaks  of 
being  '*  Kindly  separated  by  nature  and  a  wide 
ocean  from  the  exterminating  havoc  of  one- 
quarter  of  the  globe ;  too  high-minded  to  endure 
the  degradations  of  others,  possessing  a  chosen 
country,''  etc. 

If  we  remember  that  no  other  man  in  Ameri- 
can history,  except  Lincoln,  so  thoroughly  im- 
pressed himself  on  the  mind  of  the  people,  and 
if  we  remember  that  to-day,  after  the  passing 
of  a  century  and  more,  the  people  of  many  sec- 
tions of  the  country  refer  to  Jefferson  almost  as 
they  would  to  the  scriptures,  and  perhaps  quote 
him  more  frequently  and  correctly,  we  shall  get 
some  idea  of  how  firmly  the  American  believed 
that  European  ways  were  not  our  ways  nor 
European  burdens  our  burdens.  *'We  should 
be  most  unwise,  indeed,"  he  wrote  in  1803, 
**were  we  to  cast  away  the  singular  blessings  of 
the  position  in  which  nature  has  placed  us,  the 
opportunity  she  has  endowed  us  with  of  pur- 
suing, at  a  distance  from  the  foreign  conten- 
tions, the  paths  of  industry,  peace,  and  happi- 
ness, of  cultivating  general  friendship,  and  of 


106  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

bringing  collisions  of  interest  to  the  umpirage 
of  reason  rather  than  foree.^ 

When  the  great  territory  of  Louisiana  was  se- 
cretly ceded  by  Spain  to  France  in  1800,  a  new 
situation  presented  itself.  News  of  the  cession 
caused  excitement  in  America.  This  excitement 
was  perhaps  chiefly  due  to  the  fear  in  the  minds 
of  the  western  men,  the  inhabitants  of  the  east- 
em  half  of  the  Mississippi  Valley,  that  the  great 
river  would  be  permanently  closed  to  American 
commerce;  but  there  were  also  misgivings  at 
the  thought  that  a  powerful  nation,  like  France, 
might  once  more  obtain  vast  territories  in 
America.  This  possibly  was  the  beginning  of 
opposition  to  the  notion,  still  firmly  implanted 
in  the  American  mind,  that  the  continents  of 
America  are  to  be  parceled  out  and  distributed 
by  treaty  and  barter  among  the  nations  of  Eu- 
rope— an  unworthy  sentiment  you  may  think,  if 
it  has  not  prevented  America  in  one  way  or  an- 
other from  annexing  territory  and  people,  but 
a  real  sentiment  nevertheless.  Had  the  Amer- 
icans known  the   grand  schemes,  which  soon 

*  The  course  of  Jefferson's  administration  (1801-1809)  was 
marked  by  effort  to  keep  the  United  States  out  of  the  European 
conflict  and  to  carry  out  his  theories  concerning  the  folly  of 
war.  He  made  on  the  whole,  a  noble  struggle,  and  it  is  one  of 
the  strange  ironies  or  mishaps  of  history,  that  Madison,  his 
successor  and  disciple,  finally  had  to  lead  America  into  the 
conflict  and  to  add  her  feeble  strength  to  that  of  Napoleon. 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         107 

found  lodgment  in  the  mind  of  Napoleon,  to  take 
possession  of  a  large  part  of  Central  and  South 
America,  one  of  those  schemes  of  a  world-em- 
pire which  make  even  the  dreams  of  Pan-Ger- 
many seem  less  fanciful  and  damnable  than  they 
are,  there  might  w^ell  have  been,  in  the  early 
years  of  the  nineteenth  century,  still  greater 
objection  than  there  was  to  the  development  of 
a  French  colonial  empire.  This  particular  dan- 
ger was,  however,  avoided ;  in  1803  France  ceded 
Louisiana  to  the  United  States,  and  in  1812  we 
were  fighting  against  Britain,  fighting  the  foes 
of  Napoleon. 

The  uprising  of  the  Spanish  people  against 
Napoleon  in  May,  1808,  is  an  epochal  fact  in  Eu- 
ropean and  American  history.  The  French  em- 
peror was  face  to  face  with  aroused  nationalism, 
but  the  uprising  threatened  more  than  the  exten- 
sion of  despotic  power  in  Europe;  it  produced 
the  speedy  dissolution  of  the  Spanish  empire. 
Soon  the  Spanish  dominions  in  America  were 
in  revolt;  one  by  one  the  states  of  South  and 
Central  America  were  engaged  in  revolution, 
and  one  by  one  as  the  years  went  by  they  suc- 
ceeded in  maintaining  their  independence.  It 
is  needless  to  remark  on  the  momentous  signifi- 
cance of  the  disruption  of  the  massive  empire 
which  at  one  time  encircled  the  globe.     It  is 


108  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

noteworthy  that  Jefferson  wrote  as  early  as 
1811,  referring  especially  to  West  Florida: 
^*The  United  States  could  not  see  without  seri- 
ous inquietude,  any  part  of  a  neighboring  terri- 
tory, in  which  they  have,  in  different  respects, 
so  deep  and  so  just  a  concern,  pass  from  the 
hands  of  Spain  into  those  of  any  other  foreign 
power."  This  was  an  early  statement  of  the 
doctrine  or  belief  that  the  United  States  had  an 
immediate  and  primary  interest  in  the  passing 
of  Spanish  American  territory  into  other  hands, 
though  of  course  West  Florida  was  contiguous 
territory  in  which  we  had  far  more  than  senti- 
mental interest. 

As  these  southern  revolutionary  governments 
acquired  a  certain  amount  of  stability,  there 
arose  the  question  of  recognition  by  the  United 
States ;  but  no  definite  step  in  that  direction  was 
taken  until  1821.  In  1822  a  representative  from 
Colombia  was  received,  and  soon  after  a  num- 
ber of  other  states  were  thus  formally  recog- 
nized. On  the  whole  we  had  been  exceedingly 
cautious.  We  might  naturally  have  misgivings 
about  the  permanence  and  stability  of  these  new 
commonwealths ;  for  the  people  had  had  no  such 
preparation  for  the  tasks  and  burdens  of  gov- 
ernment as  the  English  colonists  had  when  they 
broke  away  from  the  mother  country.    Still  rec- 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         109 

ognition  was  necessary  and  wise;  and  it  fur- 
nished the  basis  for  the  proclamation  of  Mon- 
roe, which  forms  the  main  topic  of  this  paper. 

From  this  brief  story  of  our  recognizing  the 
South  American  states  as  members  of  the  family 
of  nations,  must  not  be  omitted  the  popular  in- 
terest and  enthusiasm  in  the  United  States  over 
the  new-found  liberty  and  independence  of  these 
South  American  neighbors.  There  was  joy  over 
each  new  soul  that  repented  and  entered  what 
was  fondly  imagined  to  be  the  Eden  of  demo- 
cratic government. 

But  meanwhile  events  had  taken  place  in  Eu- 
rope which  were  to  have  effect  on  American  con- 
ditions and  policies.  The  Old  World  had  ac- 
cepted the  Metternich  principle  of  ^'legiti- 
macy,'* which  on  its  positive  side  meant  obedi- 
ence to  an  established  monarchical  government, 
and  on  its  repressive  side  meant  the  beating 
down  of  popular  intrusion  upon  the  sacred  right 
and  power  of  the  crown;  all  mankind  must  be 
kept  closely  confined  within  the  limits  set  by 
autocratic  government.  The  Holy  Alliance,  as 
it  is  popularly  called,  was  an  international  union 
or  understanding  of  the  most  rigid  and  deter- 
mined character.  Its  beginning  was  in  a  docu- 
mentary statement  of  principles  drawn  up  at 
Paris,  September  26,  1815,  a  few  months  after 


110  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

the  overtlirow  of  Napoleon,  the  arch  enemy  of 
European  dignity,  the  disturber  of  placid,  legiti- 
mate autocracy.  The  avowals  of  this  memor- 
able document  are  of  a  very  moral,  or  at  least 
of  a  highly  religious,  character:  **The  policy 
of  the  powers,  in  their  mutual  relations,  ought 
to  be  guided  by  the  sublime  truths  taught  by 
the  eternal  religion  of  God  our  Savior,"  .  ,  . 
and  .  .  .  *^the  precepts  of  that  holy  religion,  the 
precepts  of  justice,  charity  and  peace."  .  ,  . 
Considering  themselves  all  as  members  of  one 
great  Christian  nation,  the  three  allied  princes 
look  upon  themselves  as  delegates  of  Providence 
called  upon  to  govern  three  branches  of  the 
same  family,  viz.,  Austria,  Russia  and  Prussia," 
It  is  an  interesting  and  curious  fact  that  this 
holy  religious  alliance,  supposed  to  embody  the 
will  of  divine  Providence,  was  entered  into  by 
one  state  which  was  the  home  of  thoroughly 
solidified  Roman  Catholicism,  by  another  which 
was  the  center  and  power  of  the  Orthdox  Greek 
Church  and  by  a  third  which  was  predominately 
Protestant.  The  pious,  solemn,  religious  tone 
and  temper  of  the  document  was  attributable 
to  the  strange  mystical  spirit  of  the  Russian 
Czar,  and  he  was  doubtless  quite  sincere  and 
quite  earnest  in  his  sense  of  religious  obliga- 
tion. 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         111 

In  these  latter  days  when  we  are  thinking  and 
speaking  so  seriously  of  a  league  of  nations  and 
of  a  world  organization  based  on  justice,  this 
old,  pitiful,  narrow-souled  Holy  Alliance  some- 
times gives  us  pause.  Are  we  too  setting  up  as 
eternal  and  unchangeable  and  as  a  principle  to 
which  we  dedicate  our  souls,  a  mere  subjective 
doctrine  which,  a  hundred  years  from  now,  will 
appear  childish,  rigid,  unadapted  to  human 
needs,  profitless?  But  there  are  vast  differ- 
ences between  the  spirit  of  the  Holy  Alliance 
and  that  of  the  present:  the  old  alliance  was 
based  on  the  theory  of  divine  right  and  abso- 
lute government;  the  new  proposed  league  of 
peace  is  based  on  the  principle  of  self-deter- 
mination and  democracy.  The  old  wished  to 
perpetuate  what  the  passing  years  had  already 
nearly  demolished,  it  was  already  decadent ;  the 
new  seeks  to  establish  more  firmly  principles 
that  certainly  are  not  dying  but  entering  into 
new  vigor.  The  old,  fondling  principles  of  jus- 
tice and  right,  sprang  not  from  the  hearts  of 
peoples,  but  from  the  crowned  heads  of  absolute 
monarchs ;  the  new  is  based  on  a  recognition  of 
broad  popular  needs,  on  the  cravings  of  human- 
ity. That  in  times  gone  by,  alliances,  pious 
manifestoes,  balances  of  power,  congresses  of 
nations,  concerts  of  Europe  and  the  like,  have 


112  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

proved  ineffective  and  nnliiiman,  is  an  argument 
in  behalf  of  higher  and  better  effort,  an  evi- 
dence of  a  need  and  a  duty,  rather  than  proof 
that  no  international  arrangement  is  desirable 
or  possible.  History  may  well  make  us  cau- 
tious and  doubtful  of  the  plenitude  of  our  wis- 
dom; it  may  make  us  confident  that  no  regime 
has  the  qualities  of  perfect  and  unchanging  sta- 
bility; but  to  use  the  failings  of  the  past  as  an 
argument  against  effort  for  the  future  is  to 
argue  for  placid  acceptance  of  everything  and 
the  hopelessness  of  human  endeavor.  To  argue 
thus  would  be  no  wiser  than  to  put  up  with  the 
** divine  right'*  of  kings,  the  immobility  of  au- 
thority, the  invincibility  of  legitimacy,  and  the 
impossibility  of  extending  human  rights  and 
welfare. 

Two  months  after  the  formation  of  the  Holy 
Alliance,  an  agreement  was  made  between  Great 
Britain,  Prussia,  Russia  and  Austria  to  act  to- 
gether in  the  management  or  control  of  Euro- 
pean affairs,  and  a  few  years  later  France  was 
admitted  to  the  combination.  The  purpose  of 
the  arrangements  announced  at  the  Congress  of 
Aix-la-Chapelle  was  to  preserve  the  peace  of 
the  world.  It  was  declared  to  have  **no  other 
object  than  the  maintenance  of  peace  and  the 
guarantee  of  those  transactions  on  which  the 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         113 

peace  was  founded  and  consolidated.  .  .  .  The 
repose  of  the  world  will  be  constantly  our  mo- 
tive.'^ In  1821  this  Alliance  announced  that 
they  had  ^  ^  taken  all  of  the  people  of  Europe  into 
their  holy  keeping  and  that  in  the  future,  all 
useful  and  necessary  changes  in  the  legislation 
and  administration  of  states  must  emanate 
alone  from  the  free  will,  the  reflected  and  en- 
lightened impulse  of  those  whom  God  has  ren- 
dered responsible  for  power.'' 

A  break  came  in  1822;  Britain,  though  then 
largely  influenced  by  the  semi-reactionary 
forces,  which  the  long  struggle  against  Revolu- 
tionary France  and  the  Napoleonic  empire  had 
strengthened,  was  out  of  place  in  a  combination 
of  pious,  hard-hearted,  divine  monarchs  and 
wily  ministers,  whose  main  object  in  life  was 
to  crush  out  every  symptom  of  popular  unrest 
and  stamp  upon  every  tendency  to  liberal  gov- 
ernment. Wellington,  the  British  representa- 
tive at  the  Congress  of  Verona,  refused,  under 
instructions,  to  sign  the  extraordinary  pro- 
nouncement of  that  body, — and  no  wonder,  un- 
less all  sense  of  English  political  liberty  had 
been  lost;  for  the  Allies  announced  their  in- 
tention to  put  an  end  to  the  system  of  repre- 
sentative government  in  whatever  country  it 
might  exist  in  Europe;  they  were  convinced 


114  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

that  such  a  system  was  ^*as  incompatible  with 
the  monarchical  principles  as  the  maxim  of  the 
sovereignty  of  the  people  with  the  divine  right. ' ' 
They  promised  to  suppress  liberty  of  the  press 
and  ^^to  sustain,  in  their  respective  states,  those 
measures  which  the  clergy  may  adopt  with  the 
aim  of  ameliorating  their  own  interests,  so  in- 
timately connected  with  the  preservation  of  the 
authority  of  Princes,  *'  inasmuch  as  the  prin- 
ciples of  religion  contribute  most  powerfully  to 
maintain  passive  obedience. 

Before  and  after  the  treaty  of  Verona,  words 
were  transmuted  into  action.  Austria  over- 
threw the  parliamentarians  in  Naples,  and 
crushed  a  revolution  in  Piedmont.  French 
forces  moved  into  Spain  and  won  a  victory  for 
legitimacy,  and  a  like  action  in  Portugal  would 
have  been  taken  probably,  had  not  England  an- 
nounced that  she  would  use  her  power  to  pre- 
vent it.  Curiously  enough,  Greek  troubles  gave 
in  reality  the  quietus  to  the  unholy  effort  of 
the  pious  combination  of  legitimate  sovereigns. 
Did  the  principle  of  legitimacy  santify  the 
power  of  the  unspeakable  Turk,  and  must  the 
combined  powers  smother  the  Greek  revolt  as 
they  had  smothered  the  revolutions  of  Italy 
and  Spain?  Such  consistency  was  too  much  for 
the  tender,  governmental  and  commercial  con- 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         115 

sciences  of  the  holy  monarchs ;  and  so  the  Brit- 
ish, French  and  Russian  ships  of  war  beat  back 
the  Turk,  and  the  independence  of  Greece  was 
established. 

This  brief  presentation  of  European  condi- 
tions serves  as  a  background  for  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  and  for  American  opinion.  Imagine, 
if  you  can,  the  sentiments  and  the  resentments 
of  Adams,  Clay,  and  Webster,  of  the  old  Jeffer- 
son, the  writer  of  the  Declaration  of  Independ- 
ence, of  Madison,  not  improperly  called  the 
Father  of  the  Federal  Constitution,  and  of 
James  Monroe.  Imagine  the  feelings  of  the 
main  body  of  the  American  people,  who  were 
just  then  coming  into  the  full  heritage  of  the 
new  continent  and  enjoying  the  sweets  of  politi- 
cal controversy  and  an  unlicensed  press.  We 
are  sometimes  amused  at  the  American  patriotic 
fervor  of  those  decades,  at  the  people's  exulta- 
tion and  exaltation,  at  their  pride  and  self-con- 
fidence, at  their  assurance  that  they  had  the  bet- 
ter part  and  the  true  life,  at  their  feeling  that 
they,  separated  from  the  'degradations''  of 
Europe,  were  thrice  blessed  and  were  smiled 
upon  by  the  God  who  cared  for  human  freedom 
and  justice.  But  we  need  not  be  surprised  that, 
for  decades  to  come,  American  destiny  and  the 
precepts  of  a  boastful  democracy  were  cher- 


116  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

ished  with  a  passionate  devotion  by  a  people 
daily  gathering  strength  and,  with  astonishing 
rapidity,  changing  the  wilderness  into  farms 
and  villages. 

But  the  statesmen  of  America  knew  that  des- 
potic repression  was  not  confined,  if  the  Holy 
Alliance  had  its  way,  to  Europe  alone.  The 
European  allies  were  seriously  contemplating 
the  overthrow  of  the  new  Latin- American  gov- 
ernments; and  in  1822  and  1823,  the  dispatch 
of  a  French  fleet  and  army  to  South  America 
appeared' not  improbable.  Fortunately  for  her 
own  reputation  and  fortunately  for  mankind 
Britain  was  opposed  to  this  enterprise;  and  for- 
tunately too  the  British  foreign  office  was  in 
the  hands  of  a  man  of  whom  it  has  been  said 
that  *^He  was  the  first  English  statesman  to 
realize  the  future  power  of  the  United  States 
and  the  value  to  England  of  a  good  understand- 
ing.'' ^  George  Canning  was  prepared  to  take 
a  determined  stand  against  the  intrusion  of  the 
allied  powers  in  American  affairs.  Those  that 
wish  to  credit  the  British  position  to  a  cunning 
recognition  of  the  advantages  gained  by  Brit- 
ish trade  in  the  free  states  of  the  new  world, 
and  those  wishing  to  see  in  Canning's  states- 
manship mere  hostility  to  French  power,  may, 

*  The  Monroe  Doctrine,  by  A.  B.  Hart,  p.  49. 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         117 

as  far  as  I  am  concerned,  cherish  their  beliefs. 
But  I  prefer  to  believe  that  British  democracy 
was  too  far  advanced  to  promote  tyranny,  how- 
ever blessed  by  the  name  legitimacy,  and  I  pre- 
fer to  see  in  Canning  a  man  with  insight,  out- 
look and  breadth  of  vision. 
',  /  We  must  now  turn  to  Russia  and  see  Ameri- 
can relations  with  that  country.  In  doing  this, 
we  must  remember  that  Russia  was  not  only 
one  of  the  leaders  of  autocratic  repression  of 
popular  government,  but  also  an  American 
power  with  considerable  territory  in  the  north- 
west and  with  even  larger  pretensions.  In  the 
interviews  between  the  Russian  minister  at 
Washington  and  John  Quincy  Adams,  Monroe's 
Secretary  of  State,  we  find  a  delightful  antith- 
esis of  interests  and  of  principles.  Adams 
was  a  seasoned  diplomat,  entirely  American, 
thoroughly  equipped  by  training  and  native 
ability  for  any  emergency  in  diplomacy,  un- 
afraid and  unabashed.  He  could  be  haughty, 
severe,  direct  and,  if  need  be,  abrupt,  and  he  was 
not  at  all  likely  to  be  overawed  by  the  assumed 
superiority  of  the  august  representative  of  the 
mighty,  though  religious,  head  of  all  the  Rus- 
sias.  In  these  various  interviews  we  find  Adams 
outlining,  with  a  precision  which  the  Russian 
minister  could  understand,  that  the  American 


118  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

continents  were  no  longer  open  to  European 
colonization.  ^*I  told  him  specially,'*  wrote 
Adams,  "that  we  should  contest  the  right  of 
Russia  to  any  territorial  establishment  on  this 
continent,  and  that  we  should  assume  distinctly 
the  principle  that  the  American  continents  are 
no  longer  subject  to  any  new  European  colonial 
establishments."  The  Russian  minister  em- 
phatically announced  that  his  country  was  de- 
voted to  the  political  principles  of  the  allied 
powers,  and  he  declared  those  principles  to  be 
*Hhat  power  of  union  and  agreement  which  in 
our  times  has  created  a  new  political  system, — 
a  new  phase  of  European  civilization — a  policy 
whose  object  is  simply  to  assure  the  peace  of  all 
states  which  compose  the  civilized  world. ''  (No- 
vember, 1823.) 

The  situation  was  a  trying  one  and  not  de- 
void of  serious  danger.  Russia,  as  we  have  said, 
was  an  American  power,  setting  up  claims  to  a 
vast  territory  from  the  Arctic  Ocean  as  far 
south  as  the  51st  parallel;  and  in  addition  she 
affirmed,  with  obvious  application  to  the  new 
Spanish  republics,  the  principles  of  the  Holy 
Alliance,  the  principles  of  despotic  government. 
Indeed,  the  minister's  words,  if  taken  literally, 
might  well  arouse  the  suspicion  that  the  institu- 
tions of  the  United  States,  hostile  as  they  were 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         119 

in  spirit  to  the  political  system  of  Europe, — 
this  **new  phase  of  European  civilization'' — 
should  be  swept  out  of  existence.  The  objec- 
tionable doctrine  of  the  equality  of  man  and  his 
right  to  self-government  had  been  left  too  long 
to  poison  the  air  and  fill  the  minds  of  the  Euro- 
pean populace  with  visions  of  liberty.  The  dis- 
cussions with  Russia  form,  therefore,  an  essen- 
tial portion  of  the  antecedents  of  the  Monroe 
Doctrine. 

One  further  word  must  be  said  before  we  take 
up  the  preparation  and  the  significance  of  the 
famous  message  of  December,  1823;  and  that 
word  has  to  do  with  the  position  of  Great  Brit- 
ain. That  power  still  refrained  from  recog- 
nizing the  Latin- American  states,  but  her  with- 
drawal from  the  Holy  Alliance  and  her  evident 
dislike  of  its  principles  weakened  the  combina- 
tion all  but  fatally.  Canning  did  not  believe 
that  the  Spanish  dominion  in  America  could  be 
reestablished  and  he  was  willing,  therefore,  to 
go  some  distance  in  letting  the  world  know  that 
both  the  United  States  and  Britain  objected  to 
forcible  intervention  by  outside  powers  with 
intent  to  crush  the  new  governments.  In  all 
probability,  the  knowledge  that  Britain  was  at 
least  partly  in  sympathy  aided  the  United 
States  and  gave  us  additional  confidence,  though 


120  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

we  cannot  see  that  Adams  was  deficient  in  cour- 
age or  counted  at  all  on  British  support.  The 
principles  that  Adams  cherished  were  strictly 
American,  and  we  need  not  wonder  at  his  hesi- 
tation in  connecting  American  policy  and  pur- 
pose with  those  of  the  country  which  until  a 
few  months  before  had  been  a  member  of  the 
political  system  of  Europe. 

It  was  decided,  therefore,  that  the  announce- 
ment should  be  made  by  the  United  States  inde- 
pendently, and  it  was  to  stand  more  than  once 
in  the  future  as  a  bulwark  against  British  de- 
velopment in  the  New  World.  Adams  char- 
acteristically preferred  a  frank  and  independ- 
ent statement  rather  than  **to  come  in,'*  as  he 
later  said,  **as  a  cock-boat  in  the  wake  of  the 
British  man-of-war." 

In  the  autumn  of  1823  President  Monroe  was 
anxious  and  alarmed.  He  consulted  Jefferson 
and  Madison.  There  were  various  cabinet  dis- 
cussions, in  the  course  of  which  we  can  in  part 
trace  the  formulation  of  the  doctrine.  Both 
Jefferson  and  Madison  were  favorable  to  join- 
ing with  England,  and  both  for  stating  the  posi- 
tion of  the  United  States  as  the  basis  of  free 
institutions.  Adams  was  laborious,  clear-head- 
ed, determined,  and  to  him  doubtless  must  be 
attributed  the  real  authorship  of  the  doctrine, 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         121 

though  Monroe's  influence  is  by  no  means  negli- 
gible. In  one  paper  drawn  by  Adams,  which 
may  be  considered  the  protocol  of  the  finished 
message,  occurs  a  paragraph  that  did  not  ap- 
pear in  the  final  draft ;  but  it  rings  so  harmoni- 
ously with  modern  pronouncements  of  interna- 
tional relationship  that  it  deserves  reading  in 
full: 

"1.  That  the  institutions  of  Government,  to  be  lawful, 
must  be  pacific,  that  is,  founded  upon  the  consent,  and  by  the 
agreement  of  those  who  are  governed;  and  2.  That  each  Nation 
is  the  exclusive  judge  of  the  Government  best  suited  to  itself, 
and  that  no  other  Nation,  can  justly  interfere  by  force  to  im- 
pose a  different  Government  upon  it.  .  The  first  of  these  prin- 
ciples may  be  designated  as  the  principle  of  Liberty — the 
second  as  the  principle  of  national  Independence — they  are  both 
Principles  of  Peace  and  of  Good  Will  to  Men." 

Despite  Adams's  determination  to  let  the  Czar 
know  what  the  principles  of  democratic  govern- 
ment are,  he  objected  to  the  President's  indi- 
cating that  the  internal  affairs  of  the  European 
states  were  our  concern.  The  declaration  must 
be  American  and  must  make  clear  that  the  west- 
ern continents  were  no  longer  to  be  the  play- 
things of  European  politics  or  policy. 

Monroe's  message  of  December,  1823,  con- 
tains the  formal  statement  of  principles  which 
have  ever  since  borne  his  name.  After  refer- 
ring to  proposals  for  settling  the  territorial 
claims  on  the  northwest  coast,  the  President  de- 


122  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

clared  that  the  occasion  had  arisen  for  assert- 
ing **as  a  principle — that  the  American  con- 
tinents, by  the  free  and  independent  condition 
which  they  have  assumed  and  maintain,  are 
henceforth  not  to  be  considered  as  subjects  for 
future    colonization   by    any   European   Pow- 

v3X  o«     •     •     • 

Reference  is  then  made  to  the  efforts  that  had 
been  made  in  Spain  and  in  Portugal  to  improve 
the  condition  of  the  people.  *^It  need  scarcely 
be  remarked  that  the  result  has  been,  so  far, 
very  different  from  what  was  then  anticipated. 
Of  events  in  that  quarter  of  the  globe  with  which 
we  have  so  much  intercourse,  and  from  which 
we  derive  our  origin,  we  have  always  been  anx- 
ious and  interested  spectators.  The  citizens  of 
the  United  States  cherish  sentiments  the  most 
friendly  in  favor  of  the  liberty  and  happiness 
of  their  fellow-men  on  that  side  of  the  Atlantic. 
In  the  wars  of  the  European  powers  in  mat- 
ters relating  to  themselves  we  have  never  taken 
any  part,  nor  does  it  comport  with  our  policy 
to  do  so.  It  is  only  when  our  rights  are  in- 
vaded or  seriously  menaced  that  we  resist  in- 
juries or  make  preparation  for  our  defense.'* 

*'With  the  movements  in  this  hemisphere  we 
are,  of  necessity,  more  immediately  connected, 
and  by  causes  which  must  be  obvious  to  all  en- 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         123 

lightened  and  impartial  observers.  The  politi- 
cal system  of  the  allied  powers  is  essentially 
different  in  this  respect  from  that  of  America. 
This  difference  proceeds  from  that  which  ex- 
ists in  their  respective  governments.  And  to 
the  defense  of  our  own,  which  has  been  achieved 
by  the  loss  of  so  much  blood  and  treasure,  and 
matured  by  the  wisdom  of  their  most  enlight- 
ened citizens,  and  under  which  we  have  enjoyed 
unexampled  felicity,  this  whole  nation  is  de- 
voted.'' 

*^We  owe  it,  therefore,  to  candor,  and  to  the 
amicable  relations  existing  between  the  United 
States  and  those  powers,  to  declare  that  we 
should  consider  any  attempt  on  their  part  to 
extend  their  system  to  any  portion  of  this  hemi- 
sphere as  dangerous  to  our  peace  and  safety. 
With  the  existing  colonies  or  dependencies  of 
any  European  power  we  have  not  interfered  and 
shall  not  interfere.  But  with  the  governments 
who  have  declared  their  independence,  and 
maintained  it,  and  whose  independence  we  have, 
on  great  consideration  and  on  great  principles, 
acknowledged,  we  could  not  view  any  interposi- 
tion for  the  purpose  of  oppressing  them,  or  con- 
trolling in  any  other  manner  their  destiny,  by 
any  European  power,  in  any  other  light  than 


124  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

as  the  manifestation  of  an  unfriendly  disposi- 
tion towards  the  United  States/' 

The  message  further  calls  attention  to  the 
unsettled  state  of  Europe,  the  interposition  in 
Spain,  and  the  natural  interest  of  the  United 
States  in  the  question  of  how  far  this  method  of 
political  repression  may  be  carried;  the  policy 
of  the  United  States  has  been  continuously  that 
of  not  interfering  with  the  internal  concerns  of 
other  powers,  to  cultivate  friendly  relations  but 
not  to  submit  to  injuries.  ^^It  is  impossible  that 
the  allied  powers  should  extend  their  political 
system  to  any  portion  of  either  continent  with- 
out endangering  our  peace  and  happiness.  If 
we  look  to  the  comparative  strength  and  re- 
sources of  Spain  and  those  new  governments, 
and  their  distance  from  each  other,  it  must  be 
obvious  that  she  can  never  subdue  them.  It  is 
still  the  policy  of  the  United  States  to  leave 
the  parties  to  themselves,  in  the  hope  that  other 
powers  will  pursue  the  same  course." 

For  our  present  purpose,  it  is  unnecessary 
to  discuss  the  effect  of  Monroe's  announcement 
upon  the  European  chancelries.  It  is  sufficient 
to  say  that,  on  the  continent,  ministers  grum- 
bled and  sneered  at  the  impertinence  of  the  pre- 
sumptuous democracy  that  thought  itself  justi- 
fied in  dealing  so  boldly  with  a  world  problem. 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         125 

In  England,  men  received  the  news  with  expres- 
sions of  satisfaction ;  and  it  was  then  that  Can- 
ning coined  the  famous  phrase  about  calling  in 
the  New  World  to  redress  the  balance  of  the 
Old.  Britain  has  since  that  time  on  more  than 
one  occasion  claimed  a  paternal  or  at  least  an 
avuncular  interest  in  the  statements  of  Monroe. 
Let  us  now  look  a  little  more  carefully  at 
Monroe's  message  to  see  what  it  contained  or 
implied  and  what  it  did  not  contain.  This  is 
important  because  it  formed  the  basis,  as  you 
well  know,  of  a  real  doctrine  which  accommo- 
dated itself  to  the  changing  and  developing  de- 
sire, impulse,  or  sentiment  of  the  people,  and 
also,  on  the  other  hand,  served  to  build  up  a 
vague,  though  often  powerful,  national  senti- 
ment controlling  and  shaping  our  foreign  pol- 
icy. Plainly  the  message  was  based  on  the  fact 
that  European  principles  of  government,  as  ex- 
emplified by  the  Holy  Alliance,  were  not  Ameri- 
can, and  that,  as  we  did  not  interfere  in  Europe, 
Europe  should  not  interfere  in  the  affairs  of 
the  Western  Hemisphere.  It  included  the  as- 
sertion that  the  time  had  gone  by  when  the  New 
World  was  open  to  occupation  and  colonization 
by  European  powers;  the  western  continents, 
moreover,  were  cut  loose  from  the  strategy  of 
European  intrigue  and  conflict.    Up  to  this  time 


126  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

the  United  States  had  announced  and  practised 
isolation,  save  that  it  had  been  driven  into  the 
War  of  1812;  now  inferentially  at  least  the 
whole  Western  Hemisphere  must  be  considered 
isolated  from  the  broils  of  Europe.  The  mes- 
sage evidently  placed  emphasis  on  the  interests 
and  safety  of  the  United  States;  it  did  not 
merely  cast  the  protecting  arm  of  a  stronger 
brother  about  the  weaker  republics  of  the  south. 
The  danger  uppermost  in  Monroe's  mind  was 
any  effort  of  the  Holy  Alliance  to  set  up  and  ex- 
tend to  America  the  political  principles  of  Met- 
ternich  and  Alexander.  There  were  **two 
spheres''  of  political  interest  and  political  prin- 
ciple, and,  especially  if  we  remember  the  atti- 
tude of  America  preceding  1823,  it  inferentially 
involved  the  avoidance  of  the  tangled  and  de- 
structive tendencies  of  European  Politik. 

Though  it  is  not  obvious  in  the  exact  words 
of  the  document  itself,  and  though  Monroe  prob- 
ably did  not  intend  to  lay  down  the  distinct  doc- 
trine that  interference  by  one  state  with  the 
internal  government  of  another  was  objection- 
able, such  an  implication  is  easily  attached  to 
the  original  declaration.  We  may  find,  there- 
fore, in  the  moral  basis  of  the  message  some 
reason  for  making  it  cover  the  principle  of  na- 
tional self-determination,  of  which  so  much  is 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         127 

said  in  these  latter  days.  We  may  be  at  least 
partly  justified  in  believing  that  the  framers  of 
the  message  objected  to  the  battering  down  of 
weak  nations  by  the  blows  of  a  superior  power 
or  a  superior  combination  of  powers.  On  the 
whole,  however,  the  message  was  chiefly  con- 
cerned with  the  separation  of  the  New  World 
from  the  politics  and  controversies  of  Europe. 

That  the  doctrine  has  for  a  hundred  years 
been  a  helpful  force  in  the  world,  all  students  of 
the  doctrine  heartily  believe.  The  entangle- 
ment of  America  in  European  rivalries  would 
have  been  unfortunate  in  the  extreme.  Aided 
and  protected  in  some  measure  by  Monroe  ^s 
message  and  the  sentiment  which  has  been  at- 
tached to  it,  the  South  American  republics  have 
been  enabled  to  live  their  own  lives  and  tread 
the  difficult  and  stony  path  leading  to  peace  and 
democratic  order. 

As  the  years  went  by  after  1823,  conditions 
changed  essentially.  Even  before  Monroe  wrote 
his  message,  the  Holy  Alliance  was  on  the  verge 
of  collapse;  by  1830  the  governments  of  Eu- 
rope were  in  no  condition  to  force  the  principles 
of  divine  right  on  the  rest  of  the  world;  many 
of  them  had  internal  troubles  of  their  own ;  the 
democratic  virus  was  spreading  contagion  in 
Europe.    Little  by  little,  states  became  demo- 


128  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

cratic,  or  semi-democratio,  or  put  on  the  airs 
and  carried  some  of  the  outward  semblances  of 
popular  rule.  To-day,  Germany  is  the  only 
state  in  which  the  monarch  openly  flaunts  in  the 
faces  of  his  subjects  his  divine  right  and  his  di- 
vine mission  to  rule.  And  so  the  Monroe  Doc- 
trine of  the  last  fifty  years  has  been  necessarily 
in  some  respects  different  from  that  of  earlier 
days.  It  has  no  longer  the  support  of  the  two 
spheres  of  political  principles ;  France  is  now  a 
democracy,  and  in  1823  it  was  France,  presuma- 
bly, to  whom  the  allied  powers  intended  to  en- 
trust the  task  of  overthrowing  the  disobedient 
southern  republics  and  bringing  them  under  the 
yoke  of  Spain.  Despite  the  changes  in  Europe, 
the  Monroe  Doctrine,  unless  it  has  undergone 
radical  change  since  April,  1917,  still  objects  to 
the  extension  of  European  authority  or  in- 
fluence to  the  American  continents.  Our  gov- 
ernment would,  I  suppose,  object  to  the  intru- 
sion of  France  or  any  other  European  power 
in  the  affairs  of  America  and  oppose  the  ac- 
quisition of  territory  in  the  New  World.  This 
sentiment  of  detachment,  originally  based  on 
differences  of  political  principle  and  on  the  need 
of  distinguishing  our  primary  interests  from 
those  of  Europe,  has  maintained  itself  despite 
the  growth  of  commercial  communication  with 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         129 

Europe,  despite  intimate  intellectual  contacts 
between  European  peoples  and  ourselves,  and 
despite  the  fact  that,  in  time  and  in  social  in- 
terest, we  are  nearer  France  and  Britain  than 
we  are  to  Brazil,  Argentina  or  Chile. 

Before  attempting  to  explain  the  modem 
Monroe  Doctrine,  it  is  well  to  take  up  one  or 
two  other  matters  and  to  review  hastily  some  of 
the  more  important  historical  occurrences  of 
the  last  hundred  years.  In  the  first  place,  we 
should  notice  that  Monroe  gave,  neither  ex- 
plicitly nor  impliedly,  any  pledge  that  we  should 
not  extend  our  own  territory  in  America. 
Doubtless  Adams's  principles  of  national  self- 
determination  would  run  counter  to  forcible 
conquest.  Yet  Adams  said  in  1823,  **It  is 
scarcely  possible  to  resist  the  conviction  that 
the  annexation  of  Cuba  to  our  federal  republic 
will  be  indispensable  to  the  continuance  and  in- 
tegrity of  the  Union  itself.''  We  had,  at  that 
time,  just  annexed  the  Floridas,  and  it  was  not 
at  all  likely  that  the  message  was  in  any  w^ay 
intended  to  be  a  self-denying  ordinance  and  pre- 
clude peaceful  acquisition  of  territory.  Be- 
fore long  we  annexed  Texas  (1845),  the  Mexican 
war  was  begun,  and  by  1848  the  territory  of  the 
United  States  stretched  across  to  the  Pacific  and 


130  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

we  had  become  a  Pacific  as  well  as  an  Atlantic 
Power. 

Whether  Monroe's  message  involved  the  prin- 
ciple of  respect  for  small  nations  or  not,  the 
time  came,  in  the  decades  between  1840  and 
1860,  when  America  was  in  spirit  imperialistic. 
This  sentiment  had  various  ingredients ;  it  was 
partly  land-hunger,  partly  boastfulness  and 
sense  of  power,  partly  an  idealistic  belief  that 
American  institutions  must  be  extended,  partly 
only  the  old  feeling  of  suspicion  and  hostility 
toward  other  nations, — an  unpleasant  product 
of  that  intense  and  exclusive  nationalism  which 
characterized  the  nineteenth  century.  Before 
1850,  the  sentiment  of  which  we  have  spoken 
was  fully  developed;  it  was  not  enough  to  ob- 
ject to  the  extension  of  European  '* principles;'* 
not  even  by  purchase,  treaty  or  consent,  was  any 
portion  of  the  Western  Hemisphere  to  be  ac- 
quired by  a  European  power.  Everything  was 
to  remain  in  status  quo,  unless  we  changed  it 
by  acquiring  territory  ourselves.  The  whole 
flamboyant  doctrine  of  America  for  the  Ameri- 
cans was  quite  naturally  enunciated  by  Stephen 
A.  Douglas,  of  Illinois,  ^^the  Little  Giant;"  it 
was  a  perfectly  natural  product  of  the  politics 
of  the  confident,  self-satisfied,  highly  imagina- 
tive, idealistic  frontier,  even  if  it  was  tainted 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         131 

by  mucli  of  the  arrogance  and  tlie  materialism 
of  the  Old  World  politics  which  these  wordy 
American  orators  pretended  to  despise  utterly. 
*' Europe  is  .  .  .  tottering  on  the  verge  of  dis- 
solution,'* ^*the  Little  Gianf  exclaimed  in 
1845.  ^'When  you  visit  her,  the  objects  which 
enlist  your  highest  admiration  are  the  relics  of 
past  greatness;  the  broken  columns  erected  to 
departed  power.  .  .  .  They  bring  up  the  mem- 
ories of  the  dead,  but  inspire  no  hope  for  the 
living !  Here  everything  is  fresh,  blooming,  ex- 
panding and  advancing.  I  would  blot  out  the 
lines  on  the  map  which  now  mark  our  national 
boundaries  on  this  continent,  and  make  the  area 
of  liberty  as  broad  as  the  continent  itself.'' 

Such  spasms  of  oratory  were  of  course  char- 
acteristic of  those  feverish  years,  which  Pro- 
fessor Dunning  has  wittily  called  *^the  roaring 
forties.''  They  are  only  one  degree  worse  or 
better  than  the  secret  policy  or  the  expressions 
of  flaming  patriotism  that  could  be  discovered 
in  the  records  of  Great  Britain,  and  probably 
really  more  human  and  respectable,  than  the 
practises  and  principles  of  Continental  Europe. 
No  one  can  look  on  the  history  of  Europe  or 
America  in  the  forties  with  much  equanimity, 
unless  he  remind  himself  that  men  were  then 


132  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

alive,  who  were  to  lead  the  nations  on  to  better 
things  in  the  last  half  of  the  century. 

Before  1860  it  was  plain  that  the  Government 
of  the  United  States  had  assumed  the  position 
of  guardian  in  the  Western  Hemisphere;  but 
this  guardianship,  though  partly  based  on  popu- 
lar suspicion  of  European  politics  and  partly 
also  on  pride  in  American  institutions,  was  on 
the  whole,  as  expressed  in  the  words  of  leading 
politicians,  not  much  less  than  a  policy  of  ag- 
grandizement. If  this  is  too  harsh  a  judgment, 
it  was  a  policy  of  hands  off  for  Europe  and  a 
free  hand  for  the  United  States ;  and  the  ethics 
of  the  diplomacy  consisted  in  the  duty  of  prais- 
ing democracy  and  in  looking  keenly,  almost  in- 
tolerantly, at  the  struggling  and  distracted  re- 
publics of  the  southern  continent.  Meanwhile 
there  had  arisen  one  of  those  startling  con- 
trasts, contradictions  that  vex  and  disturb  the 
regular  and  seemly  flow  of  history.  In  1823 
Monroe  and  Adams  had  given  utterance  to  the 
sentiments  of  humanity  in  opposition  to  the 
cruelty  and  arrogance  of  despotic  power;  be- 
fore 1860  the  United  States  stood  out  before 
the  world  as  the  champion  of  slavery.  Prating 
loudly  of  liberty,  we  held  4,000,000  black  peo- 
ple in  bondage.  The  foreign  policy  and  the 
ethical  principles  of  Monroe  and  Adams  were 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         133 

darkened  if  not  deadened  under  the  pall  of 
slaveholding  imperialism. 

With  the  advent  of  Lincoln  things  looked  bet- 
ter; the  new  Republican  party  was  a  liberal 
party  and  characteristically  prepared  to  act 
openheartedly,  or  at  the  worst  decently,  in  its 
dealings  with  weaker  states.  In  the  eyes  of  the 
Republican  party,  the  old  Democratic  party  was 
tainted  by  schemes  of  slavery  extension.  Sew- 
ard, Lincoln's  Secretary  of  State,  was  actu- 
ated by  feelings  of  neighborliness  and  respect, 
and  he  openly  announced  the  right  of  a  state 
**to  establish  and  maintain  its  own  government 
without  intervention,  intrusion,  or  even  in- 
fluence, from  foreign  nations  and  especially 
from  the  United  States/'  Anticipatory  of 
President  Wilson's  later  position  was  Seward's 
refusal  to  acknowledge,  without  delay,  the  au- 
thority of  a  usurping  despot  who  with  well- 
known  agility  and  skill  had  pounced  upon  the 
government  of  his  native  state.  Seward  wished 
some  kind  of  guaranty  that  the  usurper's 
power  had  real  basis  and  rested  on  popular 
desire. 

Through  the  days  of  Seward  (1861-1869)  and 
in  the  administrations  of  the  next  two  decades, 
there  was,  however,  no  recession  from  the  prin- 
ciple that  the  interests  of  the  United  States  in 


134  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

the  Western  Hemisphere  were  above  and  be- 
yond those  of  any  or  all  European  powers.  Not 
only  did  we  by  a  plain  pronouncement  of  our 
displeasure  drive  the  French  from  Mexico  in 
1866 ;  but  at  later  times  we  quite  unequivocally 
opposed  the  establishment  of  European  domin- 
ion and  even  the  extension  of  permeating  in- 
fluence or  control.  The  nations  of  Europe  were 
given  to  understand  that  in  the  Americans  the 
interests  of  the  United  States  were  paramount. 
No  real  leadership  ^  among  the  American  na- 
tions was  set  up,  a  leadership  based  on  a  recog- 
nition of  community  of  interest  and  the  wisdom 
of  good  understanding;  but  there  was  opposi- 
tion to  interference  by  an  external  power,  an 
opposition  as  decided  as  Europe  would  have 
felt  if  America  had,  unsummoned,  stepped  in  to 
settle  the  Schleswig-Holstein  question  or  the 
Alsace-Lorraine  difficulty.  Our  government, 
feeling  more  and  more  the  actual  necessity  of 
freedom  for  her  own  policies,  intended  to  be  free 
from  all  perplexities  arising  from  European 
ambition.  Even  Britain's  position  in  Central 
America  and  the  British  attitude  toward  the 

'Secretary  Blaine  did  make  attempts,  not  entirely  without 
success,  to  build  up  co-operation  between  the  Latin-American 
States  and  the  United  States;  but  it  is  probably  safe  to  say 
that  the  dominant  idea  at  the  time  was  our  interest  as  dis- 
tinct from  that  of  Europe. 


THE  MONEOE  DOCTRINE         135 

canal  problem  were  already  vexing  the  soul  of 
the  American  diplomat. 

With  this  rapid  survey  of  developments  in 
the  three  decades  after  the  Civil  War,  we  must 
content  ourselves ;  and  we  pass  on  to  the  Vene- 
zuelan controversy  of  1895,  when  President 
Cleveland  and  Secretary  Olney  laid  down  with 
great  distinctness  what  they  believed  were  our 
rights  and  responsibilities  and  what  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  actually  was.  Venezuela  and  Britain 
were  engaged  in  a  trying  controversy  over  some 
roods  of  territory,  each  claiming  the  disputed 
land  as  her  own.  Britain  refused  to  arbitrate, 
and  Venezuela,  though  impotent,  was  angry. 
Suddenly  the  United  States  entered  the  lists, 
demanding  arbitration ;  President  Cleveland  de- 
clared to  Congress  that  a  commission  of  our 
own  should  investigate  the  problem  and  reach 
its  own  conclusions,  and  that  our  government 
should  maintain  the  findings  of  the  commission. 
Secretary  Olney  in  his  verbal  controversy  with 
Lord  Salisbury,  was  emphatic,  not  to  say 
brusque,  while  Lord  Salisbury  was  precise,  not 
to  say  sharp  in  his  retorts.  The  American 
Secretary,  not  clouding  his  assertions  by  clever 
circumlocution,  openly  proclaimed  that  *^  To- 
day the  United  States  is  practically  sovereign 
on  this  continent,  and  its  fiat  is  law  upon  the 


136  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

subjects  to  which  it  confines  its  interposition. 
Why?  It  is  not  because  of  the  pure  friendship 
or  good  will  felt  for  it.  It  is  not  simply  by  rea- 
son of  its  high  character  as  a  civilized  State, 
not  because  wisdom  and  justice  and  equity  are 
the  invariable  characteristics  of  the  dealings  of 
the  United  States.  It  is  because,  in  addition  to 
all  other  grounds,  its  infinite  resources  combined 
with  its  isolated  position  render  it  master  of 
the  situation  and  practically  invulnerable  as 
against  any  or  all  other  powers.  .  .  .  The  peo- 
ple of  the  United  States  have  learned  in  the 
school  of  experience  to  what  extent  the  relations 
of  the  states  to  each  other  depend  not  upon 
sentiment  nor  principle,  but  upon  selfish  inter- 
est^'i 

If  anything  could  excuse  such  extraordinary 
— I  feel  like  saying  offensive — language  it  was 
the  calm  and  maddening  refusal  of  Britain  to 
arbitrate  and  the  deliberate  failure  of  British 
ministers  to  recognize  a  state  of  mind  and  a 
policy  which  the  passing  years  had  produced. 
Probably  both  President  Cleveland  and  his  Sec- 
retary were  convinced  that  nothing  but  harsh 
words  and  a  very  bold  front  would  make  any 

^President  Cleveland  did  give  a  basis  for  the  doctrine 
that  savors  of  morality :  * '  The  Monroe  Doctrine  finds  its  recog- 
nition in  those  principles  of  international  law  which  are  based 
on  the  theory  that  every  nation  shall  have  its  rights  protected 
and  its  just  claims  enforced.'* 


THE  MONEOE  DOCTEINE         137 

impression  on  the  British  cabinet  of  those  days. 
Lord  Salisbury  argued  first,  that  the  Venezue- 
lan controversy  conflicted  not  at  all  with  the 
original  declarations  of  Monroe  and  thus  re- 
fused to  recognize  the  development  of  Ameri- 
can influence  and  popular  sentiment;  and  he 
then  announced  that  Her  Majesty's  Government 
must  not  be  understood  as  accepting  the  Mon- 
roe Doctrine.  Although  I  am  ashamed  to  con- 
fess it,  I  am  inclined  to  believe  that,  if  Brit- 
ain had  not  yielded,  the  majority  of  the  Ameri- 
can people  would  have  gone  willingly  into  war; 
they  would  have  gone  into  war  for  an  idea  and 
because  of  resentment  at  what  they  believed 
were  the  selfish,  dictatorial  and  unreasonable 
purposes  of  the  British  Government.  Olney's 
words  must  strike  one  to-day  as  most  extraordi- 
nary, as  they  did  the  writer  of  this  paper  twen- 
ty-three years  ago.  His  reference  to  Ameri- 
ca's ^'infinite  resource"  and  American  mastery 
of  the  situation  were,  in  the  light  of  British 
seapower  and  our  insignificant  armed  prepara- 
tion, little  less  than  ridiculous.  Fortunately 
there  were  men  in  England  who  looked  with 
horror  on  war  between  the  two  countries,  and 
fortunately  America's  independent  examination 
of  the  whole  problem  gave  England  an  oppor- 
tunity to   recede  without  humiliation.     Even 


138  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

though  the  American  Secretary  may  have  in- 
tended to  attribute  to  Europe  alone  the  sinister 
principles  of  sordid  selfishness,  it  is  dishearten- 
ing to  think  that  only  twenty-three  years  ago 
such  crude  and  bitter  utterances  issued  from 
the  State  Department  with  apparent  sanction 
of  their  general  validity.  On  either  side  of  the 
water,  diplomatic  courtesy  has  rarely  sunk 
lower. 

The  Monroe  Doctrine  came  out  of  the  contro- 
versy with  new  virility.  It  was,  it  seemed,  no 
mere  principle  for  the  defense  of  popular  in- 
stitutions nor  a  mere  doctrine  of  primary  inter- 
est. The  will  of  America  in  all  European  deal- 
ings with  the  New  World  was  a  matter  of  imme- 
diate concern;  our  fiat  was  law  and  our  pur- 
poses needed  no  justification  but  our  word. 
Senator  Lodge  defended  the  Monroe  Doctrine 
simply  and  solely  as  a  fact;  it  needed  no  ex- 
planation and  no  defense;  it  simply  was.  ^*We 
declare  the  Monroe  Doctrine,''  he  said  **to  be  a 
principle  which  we  believe  essential  to  the 
honor,  the  safety,  the  interests  of  the  United 
States.  We  declare  it  as  a  statement  of  fact, 
and  we  must  have  it  recognized  as  our  inde- 
pendence and  national  existence  are  recognized 
by  all  the  world.''  Though  he  offered  some 
slight  modification,  the  doctrine  appeared  to  be 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         139 

that  whatever  was  done  or  attempted  by  Eu- 
rope on  our  side  of  the  water  must  be  done  with 
our  approval  or  connivance.  Possibly  as  far  as 
European  interference  in  America  is  concerned, 
Mr.  Lodge's  statement  is  the  Monroe  Doctrine 
of  to-dav ;  but  much  water  has  flowed  under  the 
bridge  since  1895 ;  new  perplexities  have  arisen 
and  new  responsibilities ;  a  liberal  and  just  con- 
ception of  duties  has  come  to  the  light,  a  con- 
ception which  embodies  ethical  considerations 
and  emphasizes  justice  and  liberty  and  com- 
panionship and  service,  ideals  which  are  also 
facts  and  they  have  been  burned  more  deeply 
into  our  very  souls  by  the  gigantic  misery  of 
war.  And  yet,  notwithstanding  recent  develop- 
ments this  must  be  said :  the  United  States  has 
a  lasting  interest  in  the  affairs  of  the  Western 
Hemisphere,  and,  if  anything  like  the  old  prin- 
ciple of  selfish  politics  is  to  continue  in  the 
world  at  large,  the  Monroe  Doctrine  will  almost 
necessarily  be  a  defense  against  any  kind  of 
foreign  intrusion.  With  militarism  triumphant, 
it  may  be  used  as  an  excuse  even  for  offense 
by  ourselves  against  Latin- American  autonomy. 
If  the  old  regime  in  diplomacy  and  interna- 
tional relation  is  to  remain — notice  we  alreadv 
call  it  the  old  regime — then  the  Monroe  Doctrine 
simply  is  a  fact ;  we  forbid  and  shall  try  to  pre- 


140  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

vent  any  interference  with  the  Western  Hemi- 
sphere, simply  and  only  because  we  want  no 
trespass  on  our  chosen  preserves,  no  lodgment, 
no  influence  within  a  field  of  operations  which 
is  primarily  American.  Under  the  old  regime 
of  suspicion  and  military  menace,  we  are,  I 
believe  fully  justified  in  simply  stating  the  Doc- 
trine as  a  fact  without  palliation  or  praise  or 
verbal  defense.  It  deserves  no  higher  or  better 
place,  if  that  is  all  there  is  to  it, — no  higher  or 
better  place  in  the  estimation  of  idealistic 
statesmen  than  any  European  doctrine  or  policy 
which  would  shut  out  foreigners  from  cherished 
areas  of  economic  penetration  and  political 
overlordship.  It  may,  I  grant  you,  be  even  then 
less  purely  selfish  than  the  European  policy  of 
like  character ;  but,  as  it  is  stated  by  Mr.  Lodge, 
it  is  fundamentally  a  policy,  though  based  on 
history  and  fostered  by  a  quasi-idealistic  senti- 
mentality, which  secures  recognition  on  the 
same  ground  as  that  on  which  spheres  of  in- 
fluence and  dictation  are  recognized  in  the  old- 
time  and  give-and-take  (especially  take)  of 
European  diplomacy.  Internally  it  will  be,  I 
trust,  altruistic;  its  selfishness  may  be  softened; 
but  as  a  fact  to  be  recognized  by  the  other  na- 
tions of  the  world  it  will  make  no  higher,  deeper 
or  more  human  claims,  than  the  assumptions  of 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         141 

the  well-known  policy  of  Europe.  Only  if  the 
world  accepts  the  ethics  of  a  clean  Monroe  Doc- 
trine can  we  expect  it  to  rest  on  anything  but 
force. 

Before  attempting  to  sketch  the  Monroe  Doc- 
trine of  the  present  day,  in  so  far  as  it  deals 
with  relations  between  American  States,  I  must 
turn  for  a  moment  to  the  canal  question,  for 
about  the  Panama  canal  in  recent  years  the 
problems  of  Monroeism  have  gathered.  Right- 
ly or  wrongly,  the  United  States  has  long  had 
objections  to  any  but  an  Axaerican  owned  and 
controlled  canal.  Useful  to  the  world  the  canal 
might  be;  but  once  built  it  would  be  to  us  a 
necessity.  Nearly  forty  years  ago  President 
Hayes  declared  that  it  would  be  ^^  virtually  a 
part  of  the  coast  line  of  the  United  States.'*  It 
is  unnecessary  to  recount  the  abrogation  of  the 
old  Clayton-Bulwer  treaty  of  1850,  and  the  mak- 
ing of  the  Hay-Pauncefote  treaties  of  1900  and 
1901,  which  secured  to  America  the  independent 
right  to  build  and  manage  the  canal.  We  may 
also  refrain  from  discussing  our  troubles  with 
Colombia  and  our  acquisition  of  the  canal  strip ; 
we  got  the  canal  strip  and  we  built  the  canal. 
I  do  not  mean  by  this  to  justify  or  to  condemn 
the  ethics  of  our  procedure;  it  is  simply  too 
complicated  a  problem  for  discussion  here.    We 


142  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

banished  malaria  and  yellow  fever,  and  at  an 
expense  of  about  $400,000,000  we  finished  the 
canal.  Let  ns  pass  over,  too,  the  question  of 
our  right  to  fortify  it;  in  the  light  of  present 
conditions  we  should  be  in  a  pretty  fix  down 
there,  if  all  we  had  to  rely  on  were  fides  Teu- 
tonica.  We  omit,  too,  the  discussion  over  the 
right  to  grant  free  passage  to  our  coast-trade 
vessels;  under  President  Wilson  we  removed 
the  discrimination  in  favor  of  our  own  coast 
trade. 

I  have  been  hurrying  on  to  a  consideration  of 
the  later  Monroe  Doctrine.  As  the  canal  is 
ours,  though  free  to  the  world,  and  as  we  have 
developing  trade  in  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  and 
the  whole  Caribbean,  that  region  has  for  us  a 
peculiar  interest.  In  a  world  of  peace  and  good- 
will we  could  go  thoughtlessly  and  fearlessly 
on ;  in  a  world  of  suspicion,  armament,  intrigue 
and  heartless  economic  exploitation,  we  must  be 
on  our  guard.  To  put  the  case  strongly,  too 
strongly,  the  Caribbean  is  within  our  sphere  of 
influence;  to  put  it  mildly  we  must  have  in  its 
waters  or  surrounding  territory,  no  rival  which 
actually  threatens  our  power  and  our  routes  of 
communication.  It  is  our  Mediterranean,  near 
at  hand;  we  must  hold  its  Gibraltar  and  its 
Malta;  and  it  is  our  North  Sea, — no  Heligoland 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         143 

in  the  Caribbean  for  ns;  Colombia  and  Vene- 
zuela are  our  Belgium,  though  a  hundred  times 
more  perplexing  and  a  thousand  times  less  self- 
reliant.  Such,  I  say,  must  be  our  attitude  in 
general  if  the  principles  of  force  are  to  govern 
international  relations. 

Let  us  first  notice  the  extension  of  our  author- 
ity and  the  acquisition  of  strategic  positions  in 
this  region  during  the  last  twenty  years.  In 
1898  we  secured  the  independence  of  Cuba;  we 
established  practically  a  tenuous  and  unselfish 
protectorate  over  the  young  republic  and  ac- 
quired a  coaling  station  at  Guantanamo.  At 
the  same  time  (1899)  we  accepted  Porto  Rico 
from  the  tremulous  hand  of  Spain.  In  1903  we 
obtained  the  canal  strip  and  soon  began  our 
work  on  the  canal.  By  a  recent  treaty,  we  pur- 
chased St.  Thomas  from  Denmark.  The  Gibral- 
tars  and  Maltas  have  been  falling  into  our 
hands.  By  establishing  quasi-protectorates 
over  Santo  Domingo  and  Haiti,  of  which  I  shall 
say  more  in  a  moment,  we  gained  reasonable 
confidence  that  the  important  harbors  in  the 
island  of  Haiti  will  not  pass  into  foreign  pos- 
session, although  our  action  was  not  primarily 
actuated  by  military  motives.  There  have  been 
infinite  perplexities  with  Nicarauga;  but  these 
have  been  partly  settled  by  our  obtaining  by 


144  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

treaty,  within  the  last  two  years  or  so,  Great 
and  Little  Corn  Islands  in  the  Caribbean  and 
Fonseca  Bay  on  the  Pacific.  I  do  not  mean  to 
assert  that  all  this  extension  of  authority  and 
all  these  acquisitions  of  strategic  positions  are 
due  to  deliberate  policy  to  build  up  military  and 
naval  security;  certainly  there  has  been  little 
or  no  evidence  of  imperialistic  temper  or  de- 
sire among  the  people  at  large;  but  the  fact 
remains,  that  in  the  last  twenty  years  we  have 
greatly  strengthened  our  hold  in  the  whole 
Gulf-Caribbean  region. 

If  the  task  on  hand  were  only  to  seize  points 
of  strategic  advantage,  it  would  not  present  ex- 
treme difficulty.  But  such  is  not  the  case;  we 
do  not  desire  to  pounce  upon  helpless  states  or 
to  enlarge  our  responsibilities.  Aside  from  our 
feeling  that  the  Caribbean  is  our  Mediterranean 
because  we  must  guard  the  canal  and  our  routes 
of  trade,  what  is  the  nature  or  what  are  the 
causes  of  the  general  problem?  The  nations  of 
Central  America  and  the  northern  coast  of 
South  America  are  weak,  unstable  and,  in  the 
management  of  public  finance,  far  from  frugal 
and  economical.  We  often  question  their  ability 
to  maintain  their  equilibrium;  we  often  ques- 
tion their  ability  to  sustain  thoroughly  trust- 
worthy governments  capable  of  fulfilling  their 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         145 

obligations.  No  policy  and  no  doctrine  can 
transmute  ignorance  and  idleness  into  intelli- 
gence, forethought  and  industry.  Still  we  feel 
and  in  some  measure  have  assumed  a  certain 
vague  responsibility,  at  least  a  defensive  re- 
sponsibility, for  these  nations  in  their  interna- 
tional relationships. 

Because,  or  partly  because,  of  the  conditions 
just  mentioned,  we  have  found  it  necessary  to 
take  particular  interest  in  the  public  financial 
conditions  of  these  countries.  Public  debts  due 
to  foreign  capitalists  are  a  source  of  concern. 
European  creditors  do  not  quietly  and  patiently 
put  up  with  careless  disregard  of  public  obliga- 
tions. European  nations  may  be  tempted  to  use 
force  to  collect  debts  or  may  make  the  indebt- 
edness a  ground  for  actual  political  domina- 
tion. On  account  of  the  apparently  hopeless 
condition  of  Santo  Domingo,  American  authori- 
ties in  1905,  under  the  direction  of  President 
Roosevelt  and  with  the  consent  of  the  govern- 
ment of  Santo  Domingo,  took  control  of  the  cus- 
toms revenue.  This  was  brought  about  by  a 
characteristically  bold  stroke  of  our  President, 
who  found  that  he  did  not  need  the  consent  of 
the  Senate  for  such  an  undertaking,  because  it 
could  be  done  by  an  *^ agreement''  and  not  by 
a  treaty.     Two  years  later,  in  1907,  a  treaty 


146         AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

was  ratified  by  both  governments.  The  condi- 
tion in  the  Dominican  republic  and  the  need  of 
action  on  our  part  are  matters  of  much  interest, 
for  they  show  how  conditions  may  in  spite  of 
ourselves  force  us  into  a  quasi,  semi-real,  half- 
hearted imperialism.  Santo  Domingo  was  in  a 
condition  approaching  industrial  ruin  and  ex- 
isted as  a  sort  of  phantom  republic  fast  falling 
into  decay.  Irrespective  of  its  public  debt  it 
might  be  even  a  breeding  place  for  disease  af- 
fecting the  whole  Caribbean  region,  the  canal 
district  and  perhaps  our  own  southern  ports.  I 
do  not  know  how  much  the  United  States 
was  affected  by  prophylactic  motives  as  dis- 
tinguished from  political  and  financial  needs, 
but  if  we  remember  how  yellow  fever  aided 
Toussaint  POuverture  to  drive  out  the  forces 
of  Napoleon  something  over  one  hundred  years 
ago,  we  may  think  that  the  mosquito  helps  to 
make  history;  it  is  no  respecter  of  doctrines. 
But,  however  this  may  be,  the  patience  of  for- 
eign ci editors  was  nearing  an  end;  and,  if  we 
were  to  protect  the  Dominicans  from  foreign 
interposition,  it  was  necessary  to  do  something. 
Fortunately  the  plan  we  adopted  worked  ad- 
mirably ;  Santo  Domingo,  in  the  hands  of  Ameri- 
can financial  agents,  began  to  look  up;  revenue 
was  actually  collected  and  honestly  distributed. 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         147 

and  a  recent  writer/  to  whose  admirable  treat- 
ment I  am  indebted  for  some  of  the  statements 
in  this  paper,  calls  attention  to  the  fact  that  an 
ex-president  of  the  Republic  went  out  of  office 
without  the  help  of  a  revolution  and  lived  to 
die  without  the  help  of  an  assassin. 

In  the  meantime  conditions  in  Haiti  were  al- 
most as  bad  as  they  had  been  in  Santo  Domingo. 
The  American  Navy  restored  order  in  the  dis- 
tracted so-called  republic — ^more  properly  desig- 
nated as  a  revolving  despotism, — and  finally  in 
the  administration  of  President  Wilson,  Feb- 
ruary, 1916,  a  treaty  was  made  and  ratified, 
granting  to  our  government  supervision  of  the 
finances  of  the  country.  Secretary  Lansing  an- 
nounced that  ^'the  United  States  has  no  pur- 
pose of  aggression  and  it  is  entirely  disinter- 
ested in  promoting  this  protectorate.''  We 
have  no  reason  to  suppose  that  this  action  was 
taken  because  of  some  secret  imperialistic  de- 
sign. 

I  have  already  spoken  of  our  arrangement 
with  Nicaragua,  whereby  we  secured  territory; 
this  arrangement  was  probably  due,  partly  to 
our  desire  for  possession  of  certain  strategic 
positions,  and  partly  due  to  internal  financial 

^Chester   Lloyd  Jones,   in   the  Caribbean  Interests  of  the 
United  States. 


148  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

and  political  confusion  of  the  country.  No  final 
treaty  has  been  entered  into  with  Nicaragua 
authorizing  our  supervision  of  her  finances ;  but 
American  capitalists  have  done  something  and 
it  is  not  unlikely  that  here,  too,  our  government 
must  step  in  to  take  charge  of  the  revenues. 
Thus  it  is  seen  that  we  have  been  forced  by  the 
Monroe  Doctrine,  i.  e.,  by  our  permanent  in- 
terest in  preventing  foreign  powers  from  ob- 
taining new  political  authority  in  the  Western 
Hemisphere,  and  by  our  sense  of  obligation  and 
friendliness,  to  establish  partial  or  real  pro- 
tectorates in  the  Caribbean  region. 

So  far  we  have  considered  the  perplexities 
arising  from  governmental  incompetence  and 
from  the  burden  of  the  republic  debts  owned  by 
foreign  capitalists.  But  there  are  other  prob- 
lems on  the  whole  more  vexing  and  disturbing. 
If  the  Caribbean  is  our  Mediterranean  because 
of  our  interest  in  the  canal.  Central  America 
and  Mexico  are  our  North  African  states.  They 
are  undeveloped  and  backward  regions  like 
those  which  have  been  economically  penetrated 
by  the  European  powers;  they  are  like  those 
backward  nations  which  have  been  called  the 
stakes  of  modern  diplomacy.  There  are  many 
causes  for  the  present  European  war,  but  cer- 
tainly one  of  them  is  the  rivalry  of  the  nations 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         149 

for  economic  and  political  control  in  African 
and  Western  Asia.  The  temptation  to  extend 
capitalistic  interest  in  Mexico  and  Central 
America  is  very  great.  The  region  is  exceed- 
ingly rich  and  inviting;  it  cannot  be  left  unde- 
veloped; capital  is  needed  and  capital  has  al- 
ready sought  its  legitimate  opportunity.  Be- 
cause of  the  attractive  fields  for  industrial  en- 
terprise, and  because  of  our  wary  watchful- 
ness, the  Germans  have  sneered  at  the  Monroe 
Doctrine,  declaring  that  it  is  purely  an  economic 
pronouncement.  This  sneer  at  our  pretended 
possession  of  altruism  or  of  any  purely  political 
principles,  this  intimation  that  we  are  cherish- 
ing Monroe  for  revenue  only,  is  of  course  un- 
founded, as  perhaps  I  may  show  later ;  but  cer- 
tainly the  present  and  probably  the  future  per- 
plexities grow  out  of  economic  conditions.  As 
the  shield  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine  was  first  held 
up  a  hundred  years  ago  to  protect  struggling 
independent  nations  from  being  crushed  and 
free  government  from  being  overthrown,  so  now 
we  fear  economic  exploitation  and  all  its  effects. 
We  realize  that  European  capitalists,  that  have 
made  investments  in  Central  America,  may  de- 
mand protection  and  security  from  their  o^ti 
governments,  and  that  the  call  may  be  answered 


150  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

by  political  interference  or  possibly  by  political 
domination. 

I  have  said  that  the  countries  of  the  region 
are  rich  in  certain  natural  products  and  natu- 
ral resources.  From  them  come  great  quan- 
tities of  sugar,  coffee,  cocoa,  rubber,  lumber, 
fruit  and,  perhaps  most  important  of  all,  petro- 
leum. It  is  said  that  7,000,000  bananas  are  ex- 
ported in  a  single  year  and  we  now  annually 
consume  in  the  United  States  some  65  bananas 
for  every  man,  woman  and  child  in  the  land. 
Is  it  necessary  to  do  more  than  refer  to  the  oil 
deposits  of  Mexico  and  the  Caribbean  region, 
in  order  to  call  up  a  whole  pandora  box  of  cupid- 
ities and  perils?  The  oil  regions  of  Mexico 
are  of  vast  extent  and  of  great  productivity. 
Oil  fields,  as  yet  largely  unexplored  but  doubt- 
less of  much  importance,  lie  in  Colombia.  There 
are,  I  believe,  indications  that  the  whole  north- 
ern coast  of  South  America  will  be  found  to  be 
rich  in  oil.  All  this  means  a  source  of  supply 
for  oil-burning  naval  ships  and  for  merchant- 
men, gasoline  for  automobiles  and  motor  boats, 
lubricants  for  countless  shafts  humming  in  in- 
dustry. If  the  war  has  taught  no  moral  lesson 
and  given  us  no  political  instruction,  it  has 
surely  shown  the  overwhelming  importance  of 
four  things — wheat,  coal,  iron,  petroleum. 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         151 

Thus,  there  arises  the  same  sort  of  a  condi- 
tion as  that  which  has  troubled  the  political 
system  of  Europe  for  a  generation.  From  this 
condition  arise  a  series  of  questions.  Does  the 
flag  follow  the  dollar?  How  far  shall  we  allow 
ourselves  to  be  imperialistic  in  politics  by  send- 
ing the  flag  to  protect  capital  invested  in  what 
are  called  the  backward  nations?  Can  we  al- 
low foreign  nations  to  obtain  safety  for  in- 
vested capital  by  using  their  fleets?  Can  we 
allow  our  own  government  to  use  like  methods  ? 
May  we  ourselves  use  any  or  all  means,  but 
must  we  lay  the  heavy  hand  of  Monroe  on  a 
European  government  that  would  follow  our  ex- 
ample? With  the  best  of  intentions  and  with 
sincere  desire  to  preserve  peace,  we  are  still 
faced  w^ith  perplexities. 

To  make  matters  more  puzzling  still,  we  have 
to  do  not  alone  with  foreign  investments  but 
with  foreign  companies  and  foreign  individuals, 
actually  owning  and  managing  vast  properties ; 
it  is  not  simply  a  question  of  investment  by  for- 
eigners in  the  domestic  enterprises  of  a  back- 
ward state;  the  enterprises  are  British  or  Ger- 
man or  American  and  are  managed  by  resident 
foreigners.  The  industries  of  Guatemala,  for 
example,  are  largely  in  German  hands.  It  is 
declared  that  it  is  financially  a  German  colony, 


152  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

inasmuch  as  80  per  cent,  of  the  capital  is  Ger- 
man. Of  the  total  wealth  of  Mexico  about  40 
per  cent,  is  said  to  be  owned  by  citizens  of  the 
United  States,  about  13  per  cent,  by  English- 
men, 7  per  cent,  by  Frenchmen,  and  the  most  of 
the  remainder  by  Mexicans. 

In  trying  to  reach  some  solution  of  these 
problems,  America  has  taken  notable  steps  in 
the  last  twenty  years.  Presented  chronologi- 
cally they  appear  as  actual  developments  of  an 
established  and  clear-out  policy.  Although  the 
action  taken  in  the  case  of  Cuba,  Santo  Do- 
mingo, Haiti  and  Nicaragua  are  important  illus- 
trations of  this  developing  policy,  I  need  not 
refer  to  them  again  but  will  take  up  the  an- 
nouncements of  principles.  In  a  series  of  mes- 
sages and  discussions.  President  Roosevelt  pre- 
sented a  number  of  very  important  assertions, 
some  of  which,  we  may  see,  do  not  contradict 
but  help  to  support  the  principles  and  ethics 
of  doctrine  of  President  Wilson,  which  I  am 
soon  to  discuss.  1.  We  must  watch  over  the 
approaches  to  the  canal.  2.  We  shall  interfere 
with  the  Latin-American  states  only  in  case  of 
real  need.  3.  We  shall  not  use  the  Monroe  Doc- 
trine to  excuse  aggrandizement  on  our  part. 
We  must  try  to  convince  the  nations  of  the 
Western  Continent  that  no  just  and  orderly 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         153 

government  has  anything  to  fear  from  us.  4. 
We  do  not  guarantee  a  state  against  merited 
punishment,  but  punishment  must  not  result  in 
taking  of  territory  by  any  non- American  power. 
5.  The  Doctrine  is  a  long  step  toward  the  peace 
of  the  world.  ^^  During  the  past  century  other 
influences  have  established  permanence  and  in- 
dependence of  the  smaller  states  of  Europe." 
Through  the  Monroe  Doctrine  we  hope  to  be 
able  to  secure  a  like  permanence  here.  6.  The 
United  States  may  be  forced  by  the  Monroe 
Doctrine,  in  case  of  flagrant  wrong  doing  or  the 
impotence  of  an  American  state,  to  exercise  in- 
ternational police  power  in  America.  7.  The 
Monroe  Doctrine  is  the  cardinal  feature  of 
American  foreign  policy  and  we  must  back  it  up 
with  a  strong  navy.  8.  We  do  not  intend  to  in- 
terfere abroad,  though  not  without  sympathy 
for  unhappy  peoples.^  Mr.  Root,  whose  in- 
fluence in  the  United  States  is  very  strong,  has 
on  various  occasions  interpreted  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  in  a  spirit  of  liberality  and  respect  for 
the  rights  of  smaller  states  of  the  Western 
Hemisphere. 

The  United  States  delegates  to  the  Pan- 
A.merican  Conference  at  Rio  de  Janeiro,  in  1906, 

^  I  am  indebted  to  Professor  Hart 's  Monroe  Doctrine,  for 
condensed  quotations  from  Mr.  Roosevelt  which  I  have  used 
as  the  basis  of  the  above  statements. 


154  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

were  instructed  by  Secretary  Root  that  it  had 
been  the  long-established  policy  of  the  United 
States  not  to  use  armed  force  for  the  collec- 
tion of  ordinary  contract  debts  due  to  its  citi- 
zens by  another  government:  **It  seems  to  us 
that  the  practise  is  injurious  in  its  general  ef- 
fect upon  the  relations  of  nations  and  upon  the 
welfare  of  weak  and  disordered  States,  whose 
development  ought  to  be  encouraged  in  the  in- 
terests of  civilization;  that  it  offers  frequent 
temptation  to  bullying  and  oppression  and  to 
unnecessary  and  unjustifiable  warfare."  The 
next  year,  this  principle  was  advocated  by  the 
American  delegates  at  The  Hague  Conference 
and  it  was  at  that  time  formally  adopted.  The 
contracting  nations  thus  agreed  not  to  use 
armed  force  for  the  recovery  of  debts  claimed 
from  the  government  of  one  country  by  another ; 
but  the  abstention  from  force  was  not  to  apply 
in  case  of  refusal  to  arbitrate  or  failure  to  sub- 
mit to  the  award  of  arbitration.  This  doctrine 
or  principle,  commonly  called  the  Drago  Doc- 
trine, was  first  formulated  by  Louis  M.  Drago, 
of  Argentina  :^  but  it  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that,  though  coming  originally  from  the  Argen- 
tine, it  found  its  place  in  the  accepted  public 

*The  doctrine  originally  advocated  by  Drago  was  some- 
what more  drastic  or  comprehensive  than  it  was  in  the  form 
adopted  at  The  Hague. 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         155 

law  of  the  world  largely  because  of  advocacy 
by  the  United  States ;  it  was  a  child  or  a  protege 
of  the  Monroe  Doctrine. 

By  1913,  an  enlarged,  clarified  and  humanized 
Monroe  Doctrine  had  began  to  take  very  definite 
shape,  a  doctrine  which  did  not  contradict  the 
old  doctrine  of  Monroe,  but  was,  as  far  as  the 
affairs  of  the  Western  Hemisphere  were  con- 
cerned and  as  far  inter-American  relations 
went,  explicit  in  its  statements,  frank  and  not 
ungenerous.  Geographically  the  doctrine  was, 
perhaps,  more  limited  in  practical  application 
than  it  had  been  before;  for  unless  conditions 
have  greatly  changed,  as  they  indeed  may  have 
already  changed  because  of  the  German  danger 
in  Brazil,  the  Monroe  Doctrine  had  come  by 
1913  to  be  chiefly  concerned  with  the  area  north 
of  the  equator,  the  area  of  the  Gulf  and  the 
Caribbean.  The  center  of  interest  was  the  canal. 
But  the  mere  shifting  of  the  center  of  gravity 
toward  the  region  of  the  canal  was  by  no  means 
all.  Based  on  the  intrinsic  morality  of  the  old 
Monroe  Doctrine  and  attached  to  it,  were  now 
certain  positive  statements  not  only  of  policy 
but  of  international  ethics.  We  have  seen  that 
the  old  Doctrine  did  not  pledge  America  to 
refrain  from  any  sort  of  activity  in  the  new 
world,  though  possibly  its  moral  implications 


156  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

involved  consideration  for  the  rights  of  other 
nations;  we  have  also  seen  that  the  Doctrine 
fell  in  the  course  of  time  to  be  only  a  statement 
of  fact  which  must  be  accepted  by  other  na- 
tions ;  it  fell  to  be  a  statement  of  fact  that  the 
American  continents  were  our  business  and  not 
Europe's  and  that  what  we  did  here  within  our 
sphere  of  influence  (Olney  said  *  ^  sovereignty '  ^ 
was  nobody's  concern  but  our  own. 

As  I  have  said,  before  1913  there  was  the 
beginning  of  something  else;  preparing  to  de- 
fend American  States  against  acquisition  of  ter- 
ritory by  European  powers,  we  went  further, — 
we  stated  our  objection  to  the  use  of  force  to 
collect  debts,  we  helped  in  writing  the  modified 
Drago  Doctrine  into  the  international  law  of 
the  world.  We  went  still  further;  we  were  de- 
veloping the  reverse  side  of  the  Doctrine,  bring- 
ing out  not  so  much  the  side  of  the  shield  that 
faced  Europe  and  warded  her  off,  as  the  side 
that  faced  the  Yv^estern  Hemisphere.  The  Doc- 
trine became  quite  as  much  a  principle  of  inter- 
American  relations  as  a  warning  to  the  rest  of 
the  world ;  it  began  to  show  a  comprehension  of 
duty  and  responsibility;  it  was  dimly  seen  to 
embody  a  conception  of  ethical  internationalism 
to  be  applied  in  all  inter-American  relation- 
ships; it  was  coming  to  be  looked  upon  as  a 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         157 

guaranty  of  peace  and  good  neighborhood  with- 
in half  the  world. 

It  remained  for  Mr.  Wilson  not  only  to  sum 
up  in  words  the  contents  of  the  rejuvenated, 
cleansed  and  developed  Doctrine,  but  to  live  up 
to  it  in  conduct ;  and  more  than  this,  it  remained 
for  him  to  assert,  not  so  much  the  negative  and 
prohibitory  phase  of  the  Doctrine  as  the  newer, 
positive  and  affirmative  side,  to  declare  that  we 
are  interested  in  our  neighbors'  development; 
not  merely  free  from  interest  to  injure  them.  In 
an  address  before  the  Southern  Commercial 
Congress  held  at  Mobile,  Alabama,  October  27, 
1913,  President  Wilson  said : 

"What  these  states  are  going  to  see,  therefore,  is  an 
emancipation  from  the  subordination  which  has  been  inevitable 
to  foreign  enterprise  and  an  assertion  of  the  splendid  character 
which,  in  spite  of  these  diflSculties,  they  have  again  and  again 
been  able  to  demonstrate.  The  dignity,  the  courage,  the  self- 
possession,  the  respect  of  the  Latin-American  States,  their 
achievements  in  the  face  of  all  these  adverse  circumstances, 
deserve  nothing  but  the  admiration  and  applause  of  the  world. 
They  have  had  harder  bargains  driven  with  them  in  the  mat- 
ter of  loans  than  any  other  peoples  in  the  world.  Interest  has 
been  exacted  from  them  that  was  not  exacted  of  anybody  else, 
because  the  risk  was  said  to  be  greater,  and  then  securities 
were  taken  that  destroyed  the  risks.  An  admirable  arrange- 
ment for  those  who  were  forcing  the  terms!   

' '  Comprehension  must  be  the  soil  in  which  shall  grow  all  the 
fruits  of  friendship,  because  there  is  a  reason  and  a  com- 
pulsion lying  behind  all  this  which  are  dearer  than  anything 
else  to  the  thoughtful  men  of  America;  I  mean  the  develop- 
ment of  constitutional  liberty  in  the  world.  Human  rights, 
national  integrity,  and  opportunity,  as  against  material  inter- 
ests— that,  ladies  and  gentlemen,  is  the  issue  which  we  now 
have  to  face. 


158  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

*  *  I  want  to  take  this  occasion  to  say  that  the  United  States 
will  never  again  seek  one  additional  foot  of  territory  by  con- 
quest. She  will  devote  herself  to  showing  that  she  knows  how 
to  make  honorable  and  fruitful  use  of  the  territory  she  has. 
And  she  must  regard  it  as  one  of  the  duties  of  friendship  to 
see  that  from  no  quarter  are  material  interests  made  superior 
to  human  liberty  and  national  opportunity.  I  say  this,  not  with 
a  single  thought  that  any  one  will  gainsay  it,  but  merely  to 
fix  in  our  consciousness  what  our  real  relationship  with  the 
rest  of  America  is.  It  is  the  relationship  of  a  family  of  man- 
kind devoted  to  the  development  of  true  constitutional  liberty. 
We  know  that  that  is  the  soil  out  of  which  the  best  enterprise 
springs.  We  know  that  this  is  a  cause  which  we  are  making 
in  common  with  them  because  we  have  had  to  make  it  for  our- 
selves. .  .  . 

*  *  This  is  not  America  because  it  is  rich.  This  is  not  America 
because  it  has  set  up  for  a  great  population  great  opportuni- 
ties of  material  prosperity.  America  is  a  name  which  sounds 
in  the  ears  of  man  everywhere  as  a  synonym  of  individual 
liberty.  I  would  rather  belong  to  a  poor  nation  that  was  free 
than  to  a  rich  nation  that  had  ceased  to  be  in  love  with  Liberty. 
But  we  shall  not  be  poor  if  we  love  liberty,  because  the  nation 
that  loves  liberty  truly  sets  every  man  free  to  do  his  best 
and  be  his  best;  and  that  means  the  release  of  all  the  splendid 
energies  of  a  great  people  who  think  for  themselves.  A  nation 
of  employees  cannot  be  free  any  more  than  a  nation  of  em- 
ployers can  be.  ..."  * 

We  find  here,  therefore,  not  only  a  positive 
reiteration  of  Roosevelt's  statement  against 
aggrandizement,  a  declaration  of  restraint  and 
self-abnegation  on  our  part — and  let  us  notice 
that  this  expression  of  our  intention  to  refrain 
from  encroachment  was  of  essential  interest  to 
the  Latin-American  states — ^but  also  a  statement 
of  decided  and  affirmative  interest  in  the  actual 

*  It  was  Montesquieu,  I  believe,  who  said  that  the  wealth  of 
a  nation  depends  not  so  much  on  the  fertility  of  the  soil  as 
on  the  freedom  of  the  inhabitants. 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         159 

welfare  of  Latin  America.  The  Wilson  policy 
was  and  proved  to  be  more  than  mere  abnega- 
tion; it  rested  on  the  political  idea  that  a  na- 
tion has  a  right  to  shape  its  own  destiny  and 
manage  its  own  affairs,  that  its  progress  is  of 
benefit  to  civilization  and  not  to  itself  alone, 
that  weaker  nations  must  feel  that  they  can 
live  in  safety  by  the  side  of  big  ones,  that  it  is 
the  duty  of  one  nation  to  help  another,  not  to 
crush  it,  that  capital  must  make  way  for  the 
ethics  of  decent  politics  and  decent  interna- 
tionalism, that  production  may  be  aided  by  ex- 
ternal capital,  but  that  economic  exploitation, 
so  easily  degenerating  into  plunder,  shall  not  be 
sanctioned  or  supported  by  the  political  au- 
thority of  an  external  government,  above  all 
not  by  our  own,  that  economic  burdens  should 
be  eased  rather  than  augmented,  that  the  basis 
of  peace  and  peaceful  industry  is  good  faith  and 
morality  and  not  the  mailed  fist  or  shining 
armor, — all  of  which  is  not  far  remote  from 
George  Washington's  statement  that  honesty  is 
the  best  policy  between  nations  as  it  is  in  pri- 
vate life. 

Some  of  you  may  say  that  President  Wilson 
in  dealing  with  Mexico  did  not  live  up  to  this 
code  of  ethics.  He  did,  it  is  true,  refuse  to 
recognize  Huerta ;  he  did,  if  you  insist,  use  in- 


160  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

fluence  not  to  say  force  against  him.  The  rea- 
son is  plain — did  it  conflict  with  his  theory?  He 
was  convinced,  I  suppose,  that  if  there  ever  was 
to  be  order  and  sobriety  in  Mexico,  the  gov- 
ernment ought  not  lightly  to  pass  from  one 
carnivorous  dictatorship  to  another.  He  did 
not  believe  that  the  dagger  was  the  proper  war- 
rant of  election.  He  saw  that  Huerta^s  dicta- 
torship meant  further  conscienceless  exploita- 
tion by  foreign  capital  or  absorption  of  the  rem- 
nants of  Mexican  wealth.  He  was  unwilling  that 
Huerta,  by  achieving  success,  should  give  aid 
and  comfort  to  other  thirsty  usurpers  in  the 
Latin  American  countries.  He  believed  that 
there  was  hope  of  Mexico's  struggling  through 
revolution  into  at  least  the  paler  sunlight  of  self- 
government. 

But  if  Wilson's  refusal  to  acknowledge 
Huerta  was  interference,  his  patient  waiting 
was  the  reverse.  Under  savage  verbal  assault 
at  home  and  under  sharp  and  relentless  criti- 
cism, he  refused  to  do  more  than  watch  and 
wait.  Our  government  refused  to  be  driven 
into  war,  sorely  as  we  were  pressed.^    He  knew 

*  Though  the  President  was  accused  of  undermining  Amer- 
ican character  by  his  readiness  to  deal  patiently  with  the 
Mexican  trouble,  instead  of  sending  in  an  army  and  ''clearing 
the  whole  thing  up, ' '  there  have  been  few  occasions  in  history 
disclosing  more  real  bravery,  as  distinguished  from  pugilism, 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         161 

that  there  might  be  no  end  to  it ;  he  must  have 
seen  that  most  of  the  acrimony  in  the  United 
States  would  be  made  use  of  by  capitalistic  in- 
terests, and  that  if  we  made  war  on  Mexico  we 
shattered  the  whole  fabric  of  the  new,  humane, 
peaceful,  generous,  hopeful  Monroe  Doctrine 
and  would  heap  up  a  new  mountain  of  Latin- 
American  suspicions.  He  saw  that  a  human 
problem — a  problem  of  ignorance  and  poverty — 
cannot  be  swept  away  by  war,  unless  you  treat 
a  nation  the  way  the  Turks  treated  the  Arme- 
nians by  simply  carrying  war  to  the  ultimate 
in  extermination,  or  unless  you  treat  them  by 
the  methods  we  are  told  are  now  directed 
against  the  Jugo  Slavs  that  stand  in  the  way  of 
triumphant  Pan-Germanism.  Possibly  few  per- 
sons saw  that  President  "Wilson,  in  handling 
the  Monroe  Doctrine  and  in  dealing  with  the 
Mexican  trouble,  was  expressing  only  those 
principles  which  for  fifteen  months  he  has  held 
out  to  the  world  at  war.  Perhaps  his  refraining 
so  long  from  advising  war  against  Germany  was 
due  to  a  clear  perception  that  the  world  had 
not  yet  reached  a  stage  of  thought  and  feeling 
in  which  the  principles  of  the  new  Monroe  Doc- 
trine  would   find   comfortable   companionship. 

than  did  his  refusal  to  be  stampeded  and  his  holding  our  army 
in  leash,  after  it  had  actually  entered  Mexico  to  punish  or  drive 
back  the  forces  of  Villa. 


162  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

Whether  this  be  the  pose  or  not,  we  did  go  into 
war  at  a  time  when  the  world,  outside  of  the 
military  clique  of  Germany,  was  in  a  mood  to 
listen,  at  a  time  indeed  when  the  nations  had 
reached,  through  experience,  a  place  in  which 
they  were  ready  to  accept  the  doctrines  of  the 
White  House. 

What  then  is  the  Monroe  Doctrine  in  its  newer 
applications?  What  in  its  wider  scope  does  it 
involve  and  imply?  We  must  turn  to  President 
Wilson  for  clear  statement.  In  his  famous 
speech  of  January  22,  1917,  a  speech  in  which 
he  doubtless  sought  to  draw  out  European  opin- 
ion and  find  out  just  how  far  that  opinion,  espe- 
cially among  the  Allies,  would  support  Ameri- 
can Liberal  judgment,  he  used  the  phrase  (I 
think  the  ambiguous,  perhaps  unhappy,  phrase 
in  an  otherwise  felicitous  argument) — *^ peace 
without  victory.*'  A  careful  reading  of  the 
message  indicates  that  he  did  not  mean,  in  my 
judgment,  that  no  one  must  win;  but  that  the 
peace  with  all  the  usual  accompaniments  of  con- 
quest must  not  be  forced  on  a  conquered  peo- 
ple ;  if  the  war  brought  victory  to  one  side,  the 
other,  in  the  peace,  must  not  be  treated  with  hu- 
miliation and  heart-breaking  cruelty.  The  peace 
must  be  between  equals,  not  between  a  superior 
victor  and  a  vanquished  inferior.    All  the  world 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         163 

save  Mitteleuropa  lias  not  come  to  that.  ^^Only 
a  peace  between  equals,''  he  goes  on  to  say,  *^can 
last;  only  a  peace  the  very  principle  of  which 
is  equality  and  a  common  participation  in  a 
common  benefit.  .  .  .  The  equality  of  nations 
upon  which  peace  must  be  founded  if  it  is  to 
last,  must  be  an  equality  of  rights.  Right  must 
be  based  upon  the  common  strength,  not  upon 
the  individual  strength  of  the  nations  upon 
whose  concert  peace  will  depend.  ...  No  peace 
can  last  or  ought  to  last  which  does  not  recog- 
nize that  governments  derive  all  their  just  pow- 
ers from  the  consent  of  the  governed,  and  that 
no  right  anywhere  exists  to  hand  people  about 
from  sovereignty  to  sovereignty  as  if  they  were 
property.  ...  I  am  proposing,  as  it  were,  that 
the  nations  should  with  one  accord  adopt  the 
doctrine  of  President  Monroe  as  the  doctrine 
of  the  world ;  that  no  nation  should  seek  to  ex- 
tend its  policy  over  any  other  nation  or  people, 
but  that  every  people  should  be  left  free  to  de- 
termine its  own  policy,  its  own  way  of  develop- 
ment, unhindered,  unthreatened,  unafraid,  the 
little  along  with  the  great  and  the  powerful. 
...  I  am  proposing  that  nations  henceforth 
avoid  entangling  alliances  which  would  draw 
them  into  competitions  of  power,  catch  them  in 
a  net  of  intrigue  and  selfish  rivalry  and  disturb 


164  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

their  own  affairs  with  influences  intruded  from 
without.  ...  I  am  proposing  government  by 
the  consent  of  the  governed ;  that  freedom  of  the 
seas  which  in  international  conference  after  con- 
ference representatives  of  the  United  States 
have  urged  with  the  eloquence  of  those  who  are 
the  convinced  disciples  of  liberty;  and  that 
moderation  of  armaments  which  makes  of 
armies  and  navies  a  power  for  order  merely,  not 
an  instrument  of  aggression  or  of  selfish  vio- 
lence. ' '  ^ 

President  Wilson  took  up  bodily  and  placed 
in  the  new  Monroe  Doctrine,  which  he  wished  to 
be  the  doctrine  of  the  whole  world,  the  sentences 
which  John  Quincy  Adams  wrote  and  which 
were  not  included  in  Monroe's  message,  prob- 
ably because  Monroe  did  not  wish  so  full  a  state- 

*Iii  the  spring  of  1918,  a  year  after  we  entered  the  war,  the 
President  emphatically  declared  that  inasmuch  as  Germany  re- 
lied on  force  and  wished  to  try  issues  by  force  alone,  force  she 
should  have.  I  do  not  understand  by  this,  however,  that  he  has 
given  up  the  fundamental  thesis  of  his  ''peace  without  victory" 
speech.  It  would  be  foolish  in  the  extreme  to  go  into  a  war  or 
expect  another  nation  to  go  into  war  with  the  intention  of  not 
winning  a  victory.  He  does  presumably  still  believe  that, 
though  war  must  have  its  victories,  only  a  peace  between 
equals  can  last.  The  great  purpose  of  the  war  is  to  defeat 
Germany  so  thoroughly  that  haughty  swaggering  militarism 
shall  no  longer  clank  its  sword  and  flash  its  ''shining  armor,'' 
and  that  the  government  of  Germany  will  be  suflSciently  wise 
and  humble  to  see  that  right  must  be  based  upon  the  common 
strength  of  the  nations  of  the  world.  Even  a  dictated  peace, 
which  I  hope  will  come,  will  be  a  real  and  lasting  peace  only  if 
based  on  justice. 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         165 

ment,  or  because  Adams  on  reflection  did  not 
think  it  was  wise  to  lay  down  so  advanced  a 
statement.  Those  sentences  I  have  already 
given,  but  they  will  bear  repetition  in  this  con- 
nection: ^^1.  That  the  institutions  of  govern- 
ment, to  be  lawful,  must  be  pacific,  that  is  found- 
ed upon  the  consent,  and  by  the  agreement  of 
those  who  are  governed;  and  2.  that  each  Na- 
tion is  the  exclusive  judge  of  the  Government 
best  suited  to  itself,  and  that  no  other  nation 
can  justly  interfere  by  force  to  impose  a  dif- 
ferent Government  upon  it.  The  first  of  these 
principles  may  be  designated  as  the  principle 
of  Liberty — the  second  as  the  principle  of  na- 
tional Independence — They  are  both  principles 
of  Peace,  of  Good  Will  to  Men.'*  We  cannot  be 
sure  that  all  the  implications  of  these  words 
were  explicitly  in  Adams'  mind;  but  they  are 
strikingly  like  the  principles  which  President 
Wilson  has  announced.  I  have  no  reason  for 
thinking  that  the  President  borrowed  his  ideas 
from  Adams;  he  simply,  in  a  notable  crisis  of 
the  world's  history,  gave  utterance,  as  did 
Adams,  to  the  fundamental  ethics  of  American 
democracy. 

It  thus  appears  that  government  by  consent 
is  the  only  lawful  government ;  moreover  peace 
and  liberty  appear  to  be  mutually  supporting. 


166  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

Until,  therefore,  every  nation  of  the  world 
adopts  the  principle  of  democracy  in  its  inter- 
nal organization,  there  can  be  little  hope  for 
peace  between  nations.  If  this  be  true,  it  fol- 
lows that  all  nations  desiring  peace  have  a  real 
interest  in  the  internal  organization  of  every 
nation,  and  that  internal  autocracy  menaces  the 
peace  of  the  outside  world.  But  if  every  na- 
tion must  have  this  interest  and  if  autocracy 
by  its  very  existence  imperils  the  world's  peace, 
we  appear  to  have  discovered  a  principle  at 
variance  with  the  belief  that  each  nation  must 
be  the  final  judge  of  the  government  best  suited 
to  itself.  How  far  Mr.  Adams  or  Mr.  Wilson 
reconciled  these  contradictions  or  unified  the 
two  statements,  I  cannot  say.  It  seems, 
however,  that  Mr.  Wilson  believes  in  more 
than  the  mere  likelihood  of  covert  attack  by 
militaristic  autocracy  upon  the  outside  world. 
He  sees  that  democracy  and  autocracy  are,  by 
their  very  natures,  warring  one  against  the 
other ;  that  two  inherently  antithetical  attitudes 
toward  life  and  its  responsibilities  are  in  con- 
flict in  time  of  peace ;  that  a  method  of  internal 
government  which  is  based  on  the  principle  of 
dictation  from  above  and  not  on  response  from 
below,  which  is  based  on  the  theory  that  the 
few  must  rule  and  the  rest  obey  and  toil,  is,  by 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         167 

the  law  and  the  logic  of  its  misnamed  soul, 
prompted  to  disregard  the  rights  of  others 
whose  property  it  covets,  and  is  prompted  to 
seize  and  to  dictate,  not  to  respect  the  privi- 
leges and  the  free  will  of  weaker  neighbors.  A 
nation  that  is  ruled  internally  by  a  select  and 
*^ superior'^  few,  and  this  means  a  nation  rest- 
ing its  government  on  the  subjection  of  the 
many,  will  belie  its  own  principles,  if  in  its  re- 
lations with  other  nations  it  cooperates  on  the 
basis  of  equality  and  recognizes  the  self-de- 
termination of  peoples. 

We  may  find,  then,  certain  contradictions  or 
apparent  contradictions  in  the  words  of  these 
two  statesmen,  although  I  ought  to  confess  that 
I  may  be  carrying  their  sentiments  forward  to 
conclusions  which  they  would  not  be  quite  ready 
to  accept.  In  reality,  we  may  in  this  war  stop 
short  of  a  demand  that  Germany  abandon  the 
practises  and  forms  of  autocratic  government; 
but  this  war  has  shown  what  perhaps  John 
Quincy  Adams  saw  a  century  ago,  that  only  a 
government  resting  on  consent  can  by  its  own 
philosophy  be  a  lover  of  real  peace;  and,  if 
the  world  is  to  have  real  and  abiding  peace,  it 
must  be  freed  from  the  menace  of  a  govern- 
ment resting  on  force  and  on  the  legal  theory 
that  one  or  a  few  have  the  right  to  control  the 


168  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

rest.  If  this  war  does  not  banish  autocracy 
from  Germany,  one  of  two  possible  conditions 
will  exist  after  the  war.  1.  Other  nations  will 
become  in  essence  autocratic  and  carry  the  un- 
ethical notions  of  forceful  government;  2.  The 
world  will  be  divided  into  two  camps  with  hos- 
tile philosophies  of  life,  each  endangering  the 
existence  of  the  other ;  for  democracy  and  autoc- 
racy continually  cry  out  against  the  fundamen- 
tal and  elemental  principles  of  the  other.  If 
Germany  is  sufficiently  beaten  to  recognize  the 
ethics  of  liberty,  the  world  will  become  essen- 
tially harmonious,  as  far  as  the  basic  philosophy 
of  national  life  can  make  it  so.  There  is,  of 
course,  one  other  possible  condition,  and  that 
is  that  Germany,  though  still  retaining  autoc- 
racy and  her  malodorous  philosophy,  be  reduced 
to  a  state  of  impotence ;  such  was  the  meaning 
of  Mr.  Balfour's  declaration  that  Germany  must 
be  powerless  or  free. 

John  Quincy  Adams,  whom  scholars  now  rec- 
ognize as  the  author  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine, 
if  any  one  man  is  entitled  to  that  distinction, 
and  Woodrow  Wilson,  who  has  proposed  the 
Monroe  Doctrine  of  the  world,  believe  in  democ- 
racy of  international  relations.  Both  have  faith 
in  justice  and  friendly  interest  and  reciprocal 
respect  as  the  basis  of  peace  and  of  developing 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         169 

civilization.  Both  repudiate  brate  force  as  the 
proper  means  of  deciding  questions  of  right. 
Both  consider  national  independence  and  free- 
dom the  basis  of  peace  and  good  will. 

There  is  an  appearance  of  paradox,  not  to 
say  contradiction,  in  Mr.  Wilson's  standing  be- 
fore the  world  as  the  champion  of  nationalism 
and  of  national  self-determination,  when  he  is 
also  leading  the  world  to  a  position  of  ac- 
tual internationalism — the  internationalism  of 
friendly  cooperation.  He  is,  seemingly,  preach- 
ing the  doctrine  of  self-contained  and  self-de- 
termining nationality,  when  we  in  America  have 
faith  in  the  disappearance  of  partitions  be- 
tween nationalities,  in  the  sinking  of  racial  bar- 
riers and  in  the  amalgamation  of  men  of  many 
tongues.  But  faith  helps  us  to  dissolve  this 
paradox;  for  if  a  nationality  is  unpersecuted, 
**left  free  to  determine  its  own  policy,  its  own 
way  of  development,  unhindered,  unthreatened, 
unafraid,"  it  is  sure  to  lose  its  sense  of  isola- 
tion ;  it  is  sure  under  the  influence  of  commerce, 
of  thought,  in  a  word  of  modem  civilization, 
to  find  its  contacts  and  to  feel  itself  a  portion 
and  only  a  portion  of  the  great  world.  The 
old  fable  in  the  school  reader  about  the  wind 
and  the  sun,  who  had  entered  into  a  wager  as  to 
which  could  the  more  quickly  make  the  traveler 


170  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

lay  aside  his  cloak,  is  of  perennial  appositeness. 
Let  the  small  nation  bask  in  the  sun  of  safety, 
nnthreatened  and  unafraid,  and  it  will  soon 
lay  aside  its  cloak  and  partake  willingly  in  the 
labors  of  a  complicated  and  closely  interwoven 
civilization. 

Whatever  else  we  may  say — and  here  I  re- 
turn definitely  to  the  Monroe  Doctrine — Amer- 
ica is  now  able  to  enter  the  court  of  the  world 
with  clean  hands.  Thanks  to  the  Mobile  speech 
and  the  rectitude  of  twenty  years  behind  it,  and 
thanks  to  our  policies  with  poor  distracted 
Mexico,  we  can  stand  unabashed  as  we  ask  the 
nations  of  the  world  to  throw  aside  the  whole 
baneful  system  of  greed,  lust  and  exploitation. 
To  ask  Europe  to  adopt  the  Monroe  Doctrine 
of  the  world  is  not  the  plea  of  a  wolf  in  sheep's 
clothing. 

To  apply  the  new  Monroe  Doctrine,  based  on 
the  principle  that  liberty  and  peace  go  hand 
in  hand,  and  that  autocracy,  war  and  slavery 
are  intimates  in  the  field  and  in  the  coun- 
cil chamber — to  apply  the  new  doctrine  in  the 
world  is  sure  to  be  difficult  in  practise,  though 
simple  in  theory.  We  should  despair,  indeed, 
were  it  not  that  the  free  press  of  Europe  ap- 
plauds and  it  seems,  understands  the  signifi- 
cance of  it  all.    We  should  despair  unless  we 


THE  MONEOE  DOCTRINE         171 

also  saw  more  or  less  acquiescence  in  the  belief 
that  a  lasting  peace  must  be  a  peace  of  peoples, 
not  a  scheme  of  governments.  We  should  have 
slight  ground  for  hope  unless  we  knew  that 
fresh  liberal  forces  are  awake  and  active  in 
the  souls  and  minds  of  tens  of  millions  of  Euro- 
pean common  people. 

Let  us  remember,  then,  that  the  Monroe  Doc- 
trine of  to-day  is  primarily  not  the  Americas 
for  the  Americans,  although  it  probably  does 
still  include  objection  to  the  extension  of  Euro- 
pean authority  in  the  Western  Hemisphere.  It 
means  a  principle  of  decent  and  humane  rela- 
tionship between  nations.  It  means  not  beat- 
ing down  the  weak,  not  even  sucking  out  the  life 
blood  of  the  helpless  by  commercial  profiteering. 
It  means  the  opposite  of  Prussian  Politik, 

There  is  basis  for  hope  that,  in  the  forthcom- 
ing arrangement  of  Europe,  peace  will  recog- 
nize national  liberty,  because  people  believe  that 
liberty  will  maintain  peace.  It  is  a  strange  fact 
that  we  in  America  fear  or  have  feared  that 
the  Monroe  Doctrine  might  be  lost  as  a  result 
of  our  entering  the  war.  Naturally  its  safety 
depends  on  our  winning  the  war  and  above  all 
on  our  winning  the  principles  for  which  we 
fight.  If  war  ends  in  need  of  new  armaments, 
in  the  perpetuation  of  stealthy  diplomacy,  then, 


172  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

even  if  Germany  is  militarily  defeated,  we  must 
hasten  to  put  on  the  buckler ;  we  may  be  physi- 
cally victorious,  morally  vanquished;  we  must 
hasten  to  protect  the  Western  Hemisphere  as 
our  bailiwick  and  within  it  strive  to  live  up  to 
our  principles,  if  we  can,  in  the  face  of  a  world 
whose  ethics  will  be  oozy  with  suspicion  and 
envy  and  commercialism.  But  we  fight  to  end 
all  this,  to  supplant  suspicion  by  good  faith, 
to  put  trustworthy  documents  in  the  place  of 
scraps  of  papers,  to  assure  the  right  of  small 
nations  to  live.  And  if  we  succeed,  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  need  no  longer  be  defensive  and  pro- 
vincial; it  need  no  longer  be  merely  a  watch- 
word of  our  power  or  evidence  of  our  distrust. 
More  than  ever  before  it  will  be,  if  we  succeed, 
necessary  to  wipe  from  it  all  contamination  of 
selfish  greed  and  ambition  for  conquest ;  for  the 
world  will  have  accepted  it;  the  Monroe  Doc- 
trine will  have  been  extended  across  the  ocean 
and  finally  have  worsted,  on  the  battle  ground 
of  autocracy,  the  political  system  against  which 
Monroe  pronounced  his  principles  one  hundred 
years  ago.  And  notice,  too,  that  if  the  Monroe 
Doctrine  originally  meant  that  the  United 
States  must  be  free  from  the  entangled  skein 
of  European  PolitiJc;  it  proposes  now  that  we 
win  assured  freedom  by  going  across  the  water 


THE  MONROE  DOCTRINE         173 

to  help  in  destroying  the  whole  system  of  force, 
suspicion  and  intrigue  to  which  Germany  still 
clings,  and  to  set  up  in  its  place  an  appeal  to 
the  tribunal  of  public  intelligence. 


THE  BACKGROUND  OF  AMERICAN 

FEDERALISM 


THE  BACKGEOUND  OF  AMERICAN 

FEDERALISM 

The  purpose  of  this  paper  is  to  make  plain 
two  facts :  first,  that  the  essential  qualities  of 
American  federal  organization  were  largely  the 
product  of  the  practises  of  the  old  British  em- 
pire as  it  existed  before  1764;  second,  that  the 
discussions  of  the  generation  from  the  French 
and  Indian  War  to  the  adoption  of  the  federal 
Constitution,  and,  more  particularly,  the  dis- 
cussions in  the  ten  or  twelve  years  before  inde- 
pendence, were  over  the  problem  of  imperial 
organization.  The  center  of  this  problem  was 
the  difficulty  of  recognizing  federalism;  and, 
though  there  was  great  difficulty  in  grasping 
the  principle,  the  idea  of  federalism  went  over 
from  the  old  empire,  through  discussion,  into 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States.  By  fed- 
eralism is  meant,  of  course,  that  system  of  poli- 
tical order  in  which  powers  of  government  are 
separated  and  distinguished  and  in  which  these 
powers    are   distributed   among   governments, 

177 


178  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

each  government  having  its  quota  of  authority 
and  each  its  distinct  sphere  of  activity.^ 

We  all  remember  very  well  that,  until  about 
thirty  years  ago,  it  was  common  to  think  of  the 
United  States  Constitution  as  if  it  were 
^^  stricken  off  in  a  given  time  by  the  brain  and 
purpose  of  man.'^  About  that  time  there  be- 
gan a  careful  study  of  the  background  of  con- 
stitutional provisions  and  especially  of  the  spe- 
cific make-up  of  the  institutions  provided  for 
by  the  instrument.^  It  is  probably  fair  to  say 
that  the  net  result  of  this  investigation  was  the 
discovery  that  the  Constitution  was  in  marked 
degree  founded  on  the  state  constitutions,  and 
that  they  in  turn  were  largely  a  formulation  of 
colonial  institutions  and  practises;  the  strong 
influence  of  English  political  principles  and 
procedure  was  apparent,  though  commonly  that 
influence  had  percolated  through  colonial  gov- 
ernments and  experiences. 

In  such  studies  as  these  just  mentioned,  we 
do  not  find,  nor  have  recent  works  furnished  us, 
any  historical  explanation  of  the  central  prin- 

*  This  paper  is  limited  to  the  subject  stated  above.  It  does 
not  pretend  to  assert  or  deny  economic  influences.  It  confines 
itself  to  the  intellectual  problem  of  imperial  Order.  Only  one 
other  subject  vies  with  this  in  importance — the  problem  of 
making  real  the  rights  of  the  individual  under  government. 

^  The  first  of  these  studies,  as  far  as  I  know,  was  Alexander 
Johnston's  *' First  Century  of  the  Constitution"  in  the  New 
Princeton  Beview,  IV  (1887),  175. 


AMERICAN  FEDERALISM         179 

ciple  of  American  federalism.^  And  still,  one 
may  well  hesitate  to  give  the  historical  explana- 
tion, because,  when  stated,  it  appears  as  obvious 
as  it  is  significant.  No  better  occasion  than  this, 
however,  is  likely  to  arise  for  acknowledging 
the  fact  that  out  of  the  practises  of  the  old  em- 
pire, an  empirical  empire,  an  opportunistic  em- 
pire, an  empire  which  to-day  is  seeking  for- 
mulation in  law  or  in  public  acknowledgment 
of  institutional  coordination,  an  empire  which 
the  Englishmen  even  of  a  century  and  a  half 
ago  did  not  understand — no  better  time  than 
now  to  acknowledge  that  to  the  practises  of 
English  imperialism  we  owe  the  very  essence 
of  American  federalism.  It  is  a  striking  fact 
that  there  are  two  great  empires  in  the  world : 
one  the  British  empire  based  on  opportunism 
and  on  the  principles  of  Edmund  Burke;  the 
other  the  American  empire  based  on  law,  the 
law  of  imperial  organization.  The  first  of  these, 
an  empire  without  imperial  law,  was  profound- 
ly influenced  by  the  experiences  of  the  Ameri- 
can Revolution  and  by  slowly  developing  lib- 
eralism; the  other — an  empire  with  a  funda- 
mental law  of  coordination,  also  influenced  by 
its  experiences  and  by  Revoluntionary  discus- 

*  For  one  of  the  books  which  does  in  some  degree  recognize 
the  nature  of  the  Revolutionary  discussion,  see  Imperium  et 
Libertas. 


180  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

sion — institutionalized  and  legalized,  with  some 
modifications  and  additions,  the  practises  of 
the  prerevolutionary  imperial  system  of  Brit- 
ain.^ 

If  we  go  back  to  the  old  empire  as  it  was, 
let  us  say  in  1760,  we  find  that  it  was  a  compos- 
ite empire,  not  simple  and  centralized.  We 
are  not  speaking  of  any  theory  of  the  law  of 
the  empire  but  of  its  actual  institutions  and 
their  practical  operation. 

First:  The  active  instrument  or  authority 
of  imperial  government  was  the  crown.  It 
operated,  of  course,  most  immediately  and  ef- 
fectively in  the  royal  colonies.  It  operated  by 
the  appointment  of  some  officials,  by  instruc- 
tions, and  by  disallowance  of  colonial  acts. 
The  generalization  is  probably  just,  that  in- 
struction and  disallowance  were  exercised 
chiefly  for  essentially  nonlocal,  imperial  pur- 
poses, the  maintenance,  of  the  character  and 
aim  of  the  empire.  The  process  of  review  of 
cases  appealed  from  the  colonies  can  probably 
be  similarly  classified — its  operation  was  for 
homogeneity  in  part  but  substantially  for  im- 

*  So  successful  has  been  the  empire  of  opportunism,  of 
operation  and  cooperation  based  on  understandings,  not  on  fixed 
law,  that  we  find  ourselves  looking  with  some  misgiving  on  dis- 
cussions now  in  progress  at  Westminster,  lest,  through  well 
intentioned  effort  to  reach  definiteness,  fluidity  be  changed  to 
rigidity. 


AMERICAN  FEDERALISM         181 

perial  purposes.  This  central  authority  of  the 
empire  had  charge  of  foreign  affairs,  navy  and 
army,  war  and  peace,  subordinate  military  au- 
thority being  left  to  the  individual  colonies.^ 
It  managed  the  post  office;  it  was  beginning  to 
take  charge  of  Indian  affairs  and  trade  with 
the  Indian  tribes;  it  had  charge  of  the  back 
lands  and  of  crown  lands  within  the  limit  of  the 
colonies;  it  was  preparing  to  take  in  hand  the 
building  up  of  new  colonies  (our  territorial  sys- 
tem) ;  it  exercised  executive  power  in  carrying 
out  the  legislation  of  Parliament  which  was 
chiefly  concerned  with  trade  and  navigation. 

Second:  Parliament  had  legislated  little  if  at 
all  for  strictly  local  internal  affairs  of  the  col- 
onies. If  we  omit  for  the  moment  acts  of  trade 
and  navigation,  we  should  find  the  act  making 
colonial  real  estate  chargeable  with  debts,  the 
post  office,  the  Naturalization  Act  of  1740,  the 
Bubble  Act,  the  act  against  the  land  bank,  the 
act  against  paper  money.  Each  one  of  these 
acts  was  of  imperial  scope  or  nature,  because 
it  was  directed  against  an  evil  of  more  than  lo- 
cal extent,  or  because,  as  in  the  case  of  the  post 

*  Working  out  the  principle  of  federalism  in  military  affairs 
was  a  big  problem  in  the  French  and  Indian  War,  in  the  decade 
before  independence,  in  the  Kevolution,  in  the  Federal  Con- 
vention, in  the  War  of  1812,  in  the  Civil  War,  in  the  Congress 
of    1916,   in  the  War   of    1917. 


182  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

office,  it  was  of  more  than  local  interest.  The 
acts  of  trade  and  navigation  were  in  some  in- 
stances, for  example,  the  act  against  the  smelt- 
ing of  iron,  a  somewhat  rnde  intrusion  upon  the 
sphere  of  local  action;  but  to  see  these  things 
properly  we  must  associate  them  together  with 
the  general  policy  of  mercantilism,  and  see  them 
as  a  part  of  a  system,  not  always  wisely  de- 
veloped, of  making  a  self-sustaining  empire.  On 
the  whole.  Parliament,  as  was  perfectly  natural, 
had  to  a  very  marked  extent  interested  itself  in 
regulation  of  trade;  it  was  perfectly  natural 
that  the  empire  as  far  as  Parliament  was  con- 
cerned should  have  been  largely  a  commercial 
empire;  the  part  played  by  mercantilistic  doc- 
trine in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  cen- 
turies made  such  parliamentary  interests  and 
activities  inevitable.^ 

Third:  The  Colonies  managed  their  own  'in- 
ternal police,'^  some  of  them  under  charters,  all 
by  governments  in  which  there  were  representa- 
tive assemblies.     They  levied  taxes  for  local 

*  I  have  left  out  of  consideration  the  question  of  the  ab- 
sorption by  the  colonies  of  common  law  and  the  acceptance  of 
legislation  modifying  common  law,  especially  criminal  law.  It 
is  a  big  and  complicated  question.  Limited  space  does  not 
permit  the  treatment.  I  content  myself  with  a  general  picture 
of  the  make-up  of  the  empire,  which  I  believe  is  substantially 
correct.  It  is  also  noteworthy  that  there  was  in  the  empire 
national  or  imperial  and  local  citizenship,  and  that  naturaliza- 
tion by  colonial  authorities  was  after  1740  under  imperial  law. 


AMERICAN  FEDERALISM         183 

purposes,  and  voluntarily  contributed,  after  a 
wholesome  or  a  ramshackle  manner,  to  the  de- 
fense of  the  empire.  They  managed  local  trade, 
and,  in  short,  did  the  thousand  and  one  things 
— sometimes  under  pressure  from  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  royal  prerogative — that  con- 
cerned the  daily  life  of  the  colonist. 

Any  one  even  slightly  familiar  with  Ameri- 
can constitutional  system  will  see  at  once  that 
to  a  very  marked  degree  we  have  here  the  dis- 
tribution of  powers  characteristic  of  American 
federalism.  In  fact,  if  we  add  to  the  powers 
of  the  central  authority  in  the  old  empire  the 
single  power  to  obtain  money  by  direct  or  in- 
direct taxation  immediately  from  the  colonists 
for  imperial  purposes,  we  have  almost  exactly 
the  scheme  of  distribution  of  our  own  consti- 
tutional system.^  Of  course  there  had  to  be 
found  a  thorough  working  legal  basis  and 
a  legal  method  of  operation.  The  legal  basis 
was  found  when  the  constitutional  convention 

*The  reader  may  object  that  Congress  can  now  provide  for 
standards  of  weights  and  measures,  patents,  and  copyrights. 
He  might  point  out,  possibly  with  justice,  that  coining  money 
and  regulating  the  value  thereof  did  not  belong  in  the  old 
empire  to  the  central  authority;  but  I  leave  the  old  practise 
to  justify  my  assertion  and  refer  again  in  passing  to  the  act 
against  paper  money.  The  bankruptcy  power,  as  a  part  of 
the  general  power  of  our  central  government,  probably  can 
be  traced  back  with  certainty  at  least  to  colonial  conditions, 
and  the  Bubble  Act  and  its  extension  to  the  colonies  must  not 
be  forgotten. 


184  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

of  1787  declared  that  the  Constitution  should 
^  be  law.  The  operation  of  the  central  govern- 
ment directly  upon  its  own  citizens,  a  most  im- 
portant quality  of  our  own  federalism,  prob- 
ably came  in  part  from  the  old  empire,  but  was 
distinctly  worked  out  in  the  debates  of  the  con- 
vention. 

If  any  one  wishes  to  criticise  unfavorably 
some  detail  of  the  scheme  of  empire  which  has 
just  been  sketched,  he  will  still  scarcely  deny 
that  Britain  had  a  working  federal  empire  by 
the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century.  If  Great 
Britain,  in  1760,  had  reached  out  and  said,  *  ^  this 
is  the  law  of  the  empire;  thus  the  system  is 
formed,'^  she  would  have  seen  herself  as  the 
most  considerable  member  of  a  federal  state 
based  distinctly  on  law  and  not  on  practise 
alone.  If  Britain  by  a  formal  constitution  could 
have  formulated  the  empire,  she  had,  if  the  im- 
perial order  could  have  been  frozen,  petrified, 
in  the  form  that  time  had  made  for  it,  the  Brit- 
ish empire  would  have  been  legally  a  federal  em- 
pire. But  though  she  did  not,  she  made  her 
contribution ;  her  imperial  history  had  selected 
and  set  apart  the  particular  and  the  general, 
according  to  a  scheme  which  was  of  lasting  sig- 
nificance in  the  development  of  American  im- 
perial order.     On  that  general  scheme  of  dis- 


AMERICAN  FEDERALISM         185 

tribution  the  Constitution  of  tlie  United  States 
was  founded. 

Let  us  now  discuss  this  subject  more  in  detail 
and  with  some  consideration  for  chronological 
sequence,  with  some  deference,  that  is  to  say, 
to  the  order  and  time  in  which  events  occurred 
and  arguments  were  put  forth.  The  scheme  of 
imperial  order  presented  by  the  Albany  con- 
gress is  so  well  known  that  it  does  not  need  ex- 
tended comment;  it  is  of  interest  as  a  plan  for 
redistribution  of  powers  in  certain  essential 
particulars  and  it  is  of  lasting  significance  as 
an  effort  to  select  certain  things  of  extra-colony 
rather  than  intra-colony  importance,  those 
things  which  needed  general  control  by  a  colo- 
nial representative  body.  It  tried  chiefly  to 
solve  the  problem  of  imperial  order  as  far  as 
that  centered  in  the  need  of  securing  men  and 
money  for  imperial  security;  and  for  the  time 
the  plan  failed. 

This  matter  of  imperial  security,  augmented 
in  weight  by  the  experiences  of  the  war,  be- 
came the  center  of  dispute  in  the  decade  or  so 
after  the  peace  of  1763.  Could  England  by 
parliamentary  enactment  secure  money  for  im- 
perial defense?  While  this  question  was  the 
center  of  dispute,  the  discussion  was  soon  nar- 


186  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

rowed,  or,  if  you  like,  broadened,  to  this:  Did 
the  colonies  as  constituent  parts  of  the  whole 
possess  certain  indefeasible  legal  rights  and  es- 
pecially the  right  to  hold  on  to  their  own  purse- 
strings  I  The  dispute  was  narrowed  because  it 
came  to  be  confined  to  the  field  of  theory;  it 
was  not  a  question  as  to  whether  Parliament 
could  get  money  from  the  colonies  but  whether 
they  would  acknowledge  the  abstract  legal  right 
to  get  it.  The  dispute  was  broadened,  because 
it  involved  the  whole  question  of  interdepend- 
ence and  relationship. 

Any  amount  of  argument  over  the  theoretical 
legal  right  to  exercise  sovereignty  in  the  em- 
pire does  not  get  one  very  far.  There  is  no 
great  practical  value  in  trying  to  determine 
whether  the  colonies  by  the  principles  of  Eng- 
lish law  were  subject  to  taxation  by  Parliament. 
It  may  not  be  amiss,  however,  to  point  out  that 
most  of  this  argument,  as  far  as  it  seeks  to 
make  out  that  Parliament  did  have  the  taxing 
power,  whether  that  argument  was  made  in 
1765  or  in  1917,  has  for  its  basis  the  constitu- 
tion of  the  island  and  not  that  of  the  empire.  It 
is  largely  insular  argument,  based  on  insular 
experience  and  founded  on  insular  history.  The 
unwritten  constitution  of  the  empire  is  the  other 
way,  and  that  is  just  what  the  men,  especially 


AMERICAN  FEDERALISM         187 

the  Englishmen,  of  a  hundred  and  fifty  years 
ago  could  not  see.  They  could  not  think  and 
talk  imperially,  when  it  came  to  a  matter  of  con- 
stitutional law.  If  the  practical  working  empire 
of  1760  had  been  frozen  into  recognizable  legal 
shape,  the  right  to  tax  the  colonies  would  not 
have  been  within  the  legal  competence  of  Par- 
liament, even  as  an  imperial  legislature.  And 
because  the  Englishmen  did  not  think  imperi- 
ally, because  they  did  not  realize  that  time  had 
wrought  out  for  them  a  composite  federal  em- 
pire, because  they  insisted  on  the  principle  of 
centralization  in  theory,  they  failed  patiently  to 
set  about  the  task  of  determining  some  way  by 
which,  while  recognizing  federalism  and  colo- 
nial integrity,  they  could  on  a  basis  of  justice 
and  consent  obtain  authoritatively  an  acknowl- 
edged legal  right  to  tax  for  strictly  imperial 
purposes.  Men  that  could  not  comprehend  fed- 
eralism, who  denied  the  possibility  of  its  ex- 
istence, were  incapable  of  dealing  with  a  crisis 
of  an  imperial  system  in  which  federalism  al- 
ready existed.^ 

*This  statement  needs  modification,  for  Burke,  rejecting 
legalism,  still  displayed  statesmanship  of  the  highest  order. 
He  resented  any  attempt  to  fossilize  or  ossify  the  empire  and 
sought  to  hold  out  the  idea  of  parliamentary  duty  rather  than 
legal  power.  In  these  latter  days  it  would  be  stupid  to  declare 
that  one  must  grasp  and  apply  legal  federalism  if  he  is  to 
deal  with  the  elements  of  a  composite  empire ;   Burke 's  prin- 


188  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

Some  one  may  say,  and  with  considerable 
justice,  that  the  colonists  were  also  incapable, 
quite  as  incapable  as  the  parliamentarian  and 
the  British  pamphleteer,  of  understanding  the 
nature  of  a  composite  empire.  It  long  remained 
true  as  Franklin  said  in  disgust  after  the  fail- 
ure of  the  Albany  plan:  ** Everybody  cries,  a 
Union  is  absolutely  necessary,  but  when  they 
come  to  the  Manner  and  Form  of  the  Union, 
their  weak  noddles  are  perfectly  distracted.''^ 
That  was  the  trouble — weak  noddles.  But, 
withal,  the  idea  was  hard  to  grasp,  simple  as  it 
may  appear  to  us;  and  it  took  the  discussions 
and  experience  of  a  generation  to  find  the  man- 
ner and  form  of  imperial  order,  though,  when 
they  did  find  it,  it  was  the  old  scheme  only  in 
part  modified,  representing  in  its  method  of  dis- 
tributing powers  the  familiar  practises  of  the 
empire.^ 

ciples  of  duty  and  of  freedom  have  been  proved  to  be  the 
cement  of  the  British  empire.  But,  withal,  it  is  quite  plain  that 
the  statesmen  of  the  Kevolution  on  both  sides  thought  there 
was  need  of  fixing  legal  authority;  and  those  incapable  of 
seeing  the  principle  of  distributed  authority — federalism — were 
in  a  bad  way. 

*  Writings,  ed.  by  A.  H.  Smyth,  III,  p.  242. 

^  It  is  worth  noticing  that  at  a  later  time  Franklin  himself 
after  reading  a  considerable  portion  of  Dickinson's  Farmer's 
Letters  is  evidently  at  a  loss;  and  he  at  a  comparatively  early 
day,  about  1768,  found  no  middle  ground  between  complete  in- 
dependence of  the  colonies  and  complete  power  of  Parliament. 
Speaking  of  the  Farmer's  Letters  Franklin  wrote:  *'I  have 
read  them  as  far  as  No.  8  ...  I  am  not  yet  master  of  the 


AMERICAN  FEDERALISM         189 

And  yet  it  is  not  quite  correct  to  say  that 
colonial  noddles  utterly  failed.  It  is  true  that 
the  colonists  often  spoke  as  Englishmen,  they 
claimed  rights  as  Englishmen,  they,  too,  argued 
on  the  basis  of  insular  law;  and  indeed  the  prin- 
ciples of  insular  law  were  not  at  variance  with 
the  rights  which  they  set  up  as  citizens  in  the 
empire.  But  some  of  them  went  further,  and 
defended  the  rights  of  the  colonies,  as  distin- 
guished from  the  rights  of  Englishmen;  they 
defended,  to  use  later  phraseology,  states  rights 
as  distinguished  from  individual  rights;  they 
argued  from  the  structure  of  the  empire  rather 
than  from  the  principles  which  aim  to  protect 
the  individual  from  governmental  wrong.  As 
far  as  they  did  this,  they  grasped  the  nature  of 
an  imperial  system  in  which  the  outlying  por- 
tions had  their  own  indefeasible  share,  legal 
share,  of  political  authority. 

If  there  were  space  to  examine  critically  the 
whole   mass   of   constitutional  arguments,   we 

idea  they  and  the  New  England  writers  have  of  the 
relation  between  Britain  and  her  colonies.  I  know  not  what 
the  Boston  people  mean  by  the  '  subordination '  they  acknowl- 
edge in  their  Assembly  to  Parliament,  while  they  deny  its 
powers  to  make  laws  for  them,  nor  what  bound  the  Farmer 
sets  to  the  power  he  acknowledges  in  Parliament  to  *  regulate 
the  trade  of  the  colonies',  it  being  difficult  to  draw  lines  be- 
tween duties  for  regulation  and  those  for  revenue;  and  if  the 
Parliament  is  to  be  the  judge,  it  seems  to  me  tliat  establishing 
such  principles  of  distinction  will  amount  to  little. ' '  Quoted  in 
note  in  Memoirs  of  the  Historical  Society  of  Penn.,  XIV,  281. 


190  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

should  see  a  groping  after  the  idea  of  classifi- 
cation of  powers,  and  on  the  other  hand  the 
emphatic  declaration,  that  to  deny  to  a  govern- 
ment the  right  to  make  any  particular  law  or 
any  special  kind  of  laws  is  to  deny  all  power 
and  authority — government  must  have  full  sov- 
ereign power  or  none.  In  examining  some  of 
the  materials  throwing  light  on  the  nature  of 
the  arguments,  it  will  be  well  on  the  whole  to 
exclude  those  assertions  from  which  we  can 
gather  only  inferentially  that  the  w^riter  or 
speaker  grasped  the  principle  of  differentia- 
tion. As  we  have  already  seen,  the  Albany  plan 
was  distinctly  based  on  the  idea  of  classification 
and  distribution.  The  controversv  of  1764  re- 
garding  the  revenue  act  brought  out  occasional 
indications  that  certain  distinctions  were  close 
at  hand,  if  not  as  yet  fully  comprehended;  at 
least  there  was  a  recognition  of  the  old  exercise 
of  power  over  trade  and  an  objection  to  the 
newly  proposed  schemes  of  revenue.  In  the 
main,  however,  the  American  opposition  at  that 
time  was  not  clearly  and  precisely  directed 
against  taxation  because  it  violated  a  principle 
of  imperial  structure,  but  rather  because  it  vio- 
lated a  principle  of  English  personal  liberty. 
Otis,  in  his  Bights  of  the  Colonies  Asserted,  de- 
nies the  authority  of  Parliament  to  tax,  and  ad- 


AMERICAN  FEDERALISM         191 

mils  their  right  to  regulate  trade ;  but  his  argu- 
ment against  taxation  is  English,  not  imperial 
argument,  on  the  whole.  It  is  probably  safe  to 
say  he  relied  on  personal  right  rather  than  on 
the  principles  of  empire.^ 

Still  in  these  early  days  of  1764  and  1765  cer- 
tain fundamentals  did  appear,  even  when  lines 
were  not  drawn  with  the  precision  of  later  days. 
Dulaney  recognized  a  supreme  authority  in  Par- 
liament to  preserve  the  dependence  of  the  colo- 
nies ;  he  spoke  of  the  subordination  of  the  colo- 
nies, which  still,  however,  retained  rights  de- 
spite their  inferiority;  for  ^*in  what  the  Supe- 
rior may  rightly  controul,  or  compel,  and  in 
what  the  Superior  ought  to  be  at  Liberty  to  act 
without  Controul  or  Compulsion,  depends  upon 
the  nature  of  the  dependence,  and  the  Degree 
of  the  Subordination.''^  He  suggests  that  a 
line  may  be  drawn  *^  between  such  Acts  as  are 
necessary,  or  proper,  for  preserving  or  secur- 
ing the  Dependence  of  the  Colonies,  and  such 

*  This  interpretation  of  Otis  is  of  course  strengthened  by 
the  fact  of  his  belief  in  the  representation  of  the  colonists  in 
Parliament  and  his  reliance  on  the  right  of  a  court  to  declare 
an  unjust  act  void;  but,  after  all,  Otis  did  distinguish  be- 
tween powers,  and  did  believe  in  the  constitutional  restraints 
on  Parliament. 

*  Considerations  on  the  Propriety  of  Imposing  Taxes  in  the 
British  Colonies  for  the  purpose  of  raising  a  revenue,  by  act  of 
Parliament.  (London,  1766),  p.  16,  Tyler  says  that  there  was 
an  American  edition  of  1765.    This  I  have  not  seen. 


\y 


192  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

as  are  not  necessary  or  proper  for  that  very 
important  Purpose. ' '  ^  He  thus  clearly  points 
to  the  possibility  of  an  empire  managed  in  the 
large  by  a  central  authority,  but  in  which  the 
outlying  parts  are  possessed  of  indefeasible  au- 
thority on  subjects  belonging  of  right  to  them, 
subjects  which  do  not  contravene  the  general 
superintending  power  lodged  in  the  central  au- 
\._  thority.  He  naturally  dwells  on  those  particu- 
lar exercises  of  authority  then  under  dispute, 
and  declares  that  there  is  **a  clear  and  neces- 
sary Distinction  between  an  Act  imposing  a  Tax 
for  the  single  Purpose  of  Revenue,  and  those 
Acts  which  have  been  made  for  the  Regulation 
of  Trade,  and  have  produced  some  Revenue  in 
Consequence  of  their  Effect  and  Operation  as 
regulations  of  Trade. ' '  ^  This  pamphlet  of  Du- 
laney's  was  a  statesmanlike  production,  and 
contained  at  least  the  foundations  for  the  con- 
ception of  federalism.^ 

Unhappily,  in  1766  Franklin  in  his  examina- 
tion before  the  committee  of  commons  does  not 
indulge  in  clear  and  precise  thinking.    Had  he 

^  Ibid.,  p.  17.  See  for  an  early  statement  of  federalism,  Ann 
Maury,  Memoirs  of  Huguenot  Family,  425-426 ;  letter  of  Maury 
to  Fontaine,  December  31,  1765.  Portions  of  Patrick  Henry's 
resolutions  of  1765  have  the  federal  ar^ment. 

^  Considerations  on  the  Propriety  of  Imposing  Taxes  in  the 
British  Colonies,  etc.     (London,  1766),  p,  46. 

'See  also  Stephen  Hopkins,  Grievances  of  the  American 
Colonies  Candidly  Examined,  p.  19. 


AMERICAN  FEDERALISM         193 

then  enlarged  on  the  character  of  the  imperial 
stmcture,  and  had  he  sharply  drawn  the  lines 
of  demarcation  between  imperial  superintend- 
ence and  colonial  legal  right,  possibly  the  listen- 
ing commons  might  have  understood  the  vital 
distinctions.  Franklin's  examination  admirably 
discloses  the  opportunistic  and  nonlegalistic  na- 
ture of  his  statesmanship.  In  this  examination 
he  does,  of  course,  emphasize  the  colonial  ob- 
jection to  revenue  acts;  but  he  became  hope- 
lessly confused  in  discussing  the  basis  for  trade 
regulation,  and  impressed  on  his  listeners  that 
what  was  objectionable  was  internal  taxation  as 
distinguished  from  external ;  he  appears  to  have 
impressed  this  distinction  so  firmly  that  the 
Englishmen  never  lost  the  notion  that  it  was 
peculiarly  dear  to  the  American  heart;  and, 
when  within  a  year  or  two  external  taxes  were 
levied,  the  English  administrators  were  hurt  in 
their  minds  by  the  prompt  rejection  of  their 
schemes.  It  is  true  that  Lyttleton  (1766)  called 
the  attention  of  the  lords  to  the  fact  that  the 
Americans  made  no  such  distinction,  and  that 
it  could  not  be  found  in  Otis's  pamphlet;^  but 
the  idea  seems  to  have  persisted,  aided  prob- 

*"Mr.   Otis,   their  champion,  scouts  such  a  distinction." 
Pari  Hist.,  XVI,  col.  167. 


194  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

ably  by  the  loose  use  of  terms  by  occasional 
American  writers. 

It  was  partly  to  clear  up  sucli  confusion  as 
this,  and  to  draw  the  line  properly,  that  John 
Dickinson  penned  his  Farmer ^s  Letters.  The 
thinking  of  Dickinson  was  plain,  straightfor- 
ward and  able.  Possibly  in  his  first  letter  he 
enters  upon  indefensible  ground ;  for,  having  in 
mind  the  effort  to  compel  the  New  York  legisla- 
ture to  furnish  quarters  for  troops  and  thereby 
to  incur  certain  expense,  he  insists  that  an  order 
to  do  a  thing  is  the  imposition  of  a  tax.  But 
in  no  other  place  does  he  become  entangled  in 
dubious  assertions.^  Dickinson  spoke  as  an  im- 
perialist, as  one  who  saw  and  felt  the  empire; 
he  is  hardly  less  emphatic  in  his  declarations 
concerning  the  imperial  power  of  Parliament 
and  the  existence  of  a  real  whole  of  which  the 
colonies  are  parts,  than  in  defending  the  inde- 
feasible share  of  empire  which  the  colonies  pos- 
sessed. Hitherto,  the  colonies,  save  as  they  had 
been  restrained  in  trade  and  manufacture  by 
parliamentary  legislation  under  the  general 
principles  of  mercantilism,  had  been  regulated 
even  for  purposes  of  empire  largely  by  the  ex- 
ercise of  the  royal  prerogative.    Dickinson  real- 

^  For  a  sharp  statement  of  Dickinson's  position  of  empire 
consistent  with  colonial  freedom — freedom  of  the  colonies — see 
the  early  parts  of  Letter  II  of  the  Fanner's  Letters. 


AMERICAN  FEDERALISM         195 

ized  the  necessity  of  parliamentary  control  and 
guidance ;  lie  saw  as  did  Dulaney  the  need  of  a 
superintending  authority,  and  he  openly  ac- 
knowledged that  it  lay  with  Parliament.  It  was 
perfectly  inevitable  that  a  statesman — colonial 
or  English — should  think  of  the  control  of  trade 
as  the  big  duty,  and  thus  Dickinson  emphasized 
that  duty  and  the  right  of  Parliament  to  direct 
the  trade  of  the  whole  system.  He  saw  an  em- 
pire, composite  and  not  simple  or  centralized, 
with  a  Parliament  possessed  of  indubitable 
power  to  maintain  the  whole  and  chiefly  to  look 
after  the  interests  of  the  whole  by  the  regula- 
tion of  trade.^ 

It  was  just  because  Dickinson  was  thinking 
imperially  and  was  doing  more  than  to  acknowl- 
edge that  Parliament  might  regulate  trade,  that 
his  words  deserve  especial  weight.  He  was  not 
speaking  as  a  disgruntled  colonist  merely  find- 
ing fault ;  he  was  not  setting  up  purely  insular 
constitutional  principles ;  he  was  not  talking  as 
a  frontier  individualist ;  he  saw  the  existence  of 
an  imperial  reality  and  he  presented  strongly 

*  The  distinction  between  regnlation  of  commerce  and  taxa- 
tion never,  I  think,  entirely  disappeared  from  the  colonial 
mind,  though  after  about  1772  some  leaders  came  to  the  point 
of  openly  asserting  complete  freedom  from  parliamentary  con- 
trol. See  for  the  distinction  Letter  from  the  MassacMisetts 
House  to  Dennis  de  Berdt  (London,  1770),  p.  16.  It  is  pos- 
sible that  this  letter  was  written  earlier  than  1770.  I  have 
been  unable  to  find  it  in  the  Mass.  State  Papers. 


196  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

certain  principles  of  imperial  structure.  He 
denied  that  Parliament  had  the  right  to  tax; 
scouting  the  supposed  distinction  between  in- 
ternal and  external  taxation,  he  openly  admitted 
the  authority  of  Parliament  to  regulate  trade. 

Taxation  is  an  imposition  for  the  raising  of 
revenue;  it  at  times  seems  strange,  not  that 
Dickinson  should  have  made  the  distinction  be- 
tween taxation  and  regulation,  but  that  men  at 
all  experienced  with  actual  practises  of  the  em- 
pire and  familiar  with  mercantilistic  doctrine 
should  not  have  readily  accepted  it.  That  dis- 
tinction had  been  touched  on  before  Dickinson 
wrote;  but  he  made  the  thing  so  evident  that 
men  ought  to  have  been  able  to  see  it.  Still  it 
is  not  plain  that  men  did  see  it.  At  least  they 
were  not  quite  able  to  see  that  he  was  propos- 
ing not  only  a  perfectly  valid  distinction  be- 
tween powers,  but  a  real  theory  of  imperial 
structure.  Consequently  Dickinson  *s  words  did 
not  have  the  weight  they  deserved  in  pointing 
the  way  to  composite  empire,  an  empire  in  which 
there  was  an  indefeasible  participation  of  the 
parts  under  a  government  charged  with  the 
maintenance  of  the  whole.  Federalism,  we  must 
remember,  necessitates  singling  out  of  specific 
branches  of  authority,  which  we  commonly  call 
** powers."     Nothing  is  simpler  in  the  primer 


AMERICAN  FEDERALISM         197 

of  our  constitutional  law  than  the  distinction 
between  the  taxing  power  and  the  power  to  reg- 
ulate interstate  and  foreign  commerce.  Any 
person,  though  he  be  unlearned  in  jurispru- 
dence, will  talk  glibly  of  the  commerce  power, 
the  treaty  making  power,  the  taxing  power  and 
many  other  powers,  fully  realizing  that  we  take 
certain  authorities  of  government  and  label 
them,  put  them  in  certain  receptacles,  and  leave 
to  our  astute  courts  the  duty  of  deciding 
whether  a  legislative  act  is  to  be  classified  thus 
or  so  and  whether  it  is  a  due  exercise  of  ^^  pow- 
ers" that  have  been  authoritatively  granted. 
And  so  it  is  amazing  to  us,  this  difficulty  in  see- 
ing the  validity  of  this  most  commonplace  dis- 
tinction, and  that  writers  should  still  think  Dick- 
inson was  speaking  in  confusion  instead,  as  was 
the  fact,  talking  the  A  B  C  of  American  con- 
stitutional law. 

Dickinson's  position  distinguished  the  power 
cO  regulate  trade  from  the  power  tb  tax.  The 
distinction  deserves  to  be  called  proper,  because 
we  have  had  it  in  active  operation  under  our 
Constitution  for  a  century  and  over.  But  it  was 
proper,  also,  because  it  carried  on  the  practises 
of  the  old  empire.  Parliament  had  regulated 
trade ;  it  had  not  taxed.  For  a  century  or  more 
the  empire  had  acknowledged  in  practise,  as 


198  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

well  as  in  charters  and  commissions  and  in- 
structions, the  existence  of  colonies  with  the  au- 
thority to  tax  for  local  concerns,  and  had  re- 
frained from  taxation  for  imperial  purposes. 
To  a  marked  degree  we  may  say  again  the  em- 
pire was  a  commercial  empire.  Its  commercial 
purposes  were  expressed  in  navigation  acts,  and 
a  large  portion  even  of  the  administrative  con- 
trol by  the  Royal  council  had  been  directed  to 
the  support  of  those  enactments  and  that  com- 
mercial policy. 

Before  passing  on  to  other  and  particularly 
later  appreciations  of  federalism,  let  us  turn  to 
the  other  side  of  the  matter.  Englishmen, 
whether  they  defended  the  colonists  or  opposed 
them,  were  likely  to  take  refuge  in  insular  (i.  e., 
English)  law,  not  discussing  the  question  openly 
as  to  whether  Parliament  had  become  imperial, 
or  whether,  if  it  had,  its  power  was  unlimited; 
blank  assertion  took  the  place  of  argument.^ 
They  occasionally  spoke  learnedly  or  super- 
ficially of  v/hether  places  without  the  realm 
could  be  taxed,  or  whether  such  places  must  be 
brought  within  the  realm  and  given  representa- 
tion before  they  could  be  taxed ;  and  thus,  in  re- 

^  Special  exceptions  should  of  course  be  made.  Thomas 
Pownall,  in  his  Administration  of  the  Colonies  (London,  1764 
and  later  amplified  editions),  struggles  to  find  expression.  Of 
course  there  were  others.  Vide,  for  example,  Johnstone's 
Speech  on  .  .  .  recommitting  the  address,  etc.  (London,  1776). 


AMERICAN  FEDERALISM         199 

ferring  to  past  conditions  in  the  history  of 
Britain,  they  really  recognized  the  fact  that 
even  Britain  herself  had  been  a  growth  and  had 
been  compounded,  but  curiously  enough  they 
were  blind  to  the  composite  empire  already  in 
existence  and  to  the  practises  of  a  century.  The 
freedom  from  taxation  they  discussed  from  the 
viewpoint  of  insular  institutions,  and,  as  the 
world  knows,  made  the  ludicrous  blunder  of  at- 
tempting to  impute  the  insular  system  of  repre- 
sentation to  the  whole  empire.  They  fumbled 
with  the  whole  principle  of  representation;  but 
their  chief  error  was  the  insistence  on  applying 
to  the  whole  empire  certain  rigid  principles 
which  they  believed  were  logically  irrefutable. 
Scarcely  any  one  of  them  saw  that  in  the  de- 
velopment of  empire  had  arisen  new  principles 
of  law  and  organization.  Of  course  they  re- 
jected the  distinction  between  internal  taxation 
and  external  taxation,  as  there  may  have  been 
reason  for  doing  on  practical  as  well  as  the- 
oretical grounds;  from  the  beginning  they  de- 
nied the  possibility  of  classification  of  powers; 
they  asserted  the  indivisible  character  of  legis- 
lative power,  and  almost  at  once  took  a  posi- 
tion which,  if  insisted  on  in  practise,  left  noth- 
ing to  the  colonists  but  a  choice  between  ac- 
ceptance of  an  absolute  government  at  the  head 


■^ 


200  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

of  a  centralized  empire  on  the  one  hand,  and  the 
total  denial  of  all  parliamentary  authority  on 
the  other.^ 

The  pamphlet  entitled  The  Controversy  Be- 
tween Great  Britain  and  her  Colonies,  commonly 
attributed  to  the  pen  of  William  Knox,  probably 
deserves  the  praise  bestowed  upon  it  as  being 
the  best  presentation  of  Britain  ^s  case.^  It  is 
true  that  in  one  flagrant  instance  it  falsely  jug- 
gles with  Locke's  second  essay,  and  it  shows 
more  than  usual  cunning  in  making  Locke's  the- 
ories support  governmental  authority;  but  the 
argument  from  the  history  of  Parliament  and 
the  empire  to  support  the  claim  for  imperial 
authority  is  able  and  has  the  strength  of  his- 
torical statement  as  contradistinguished  from 
bald  assertion  and  adroit  legalism.  Knox,  how- 
ever, has  a  merry  time  with  Dickinson,  proving 
to  his  own  satisfaction  the  folly  of  distinguish- 
ing between  taxation  and  regulation  of  com- 
merce ;  and  he  thus  fails  utterly  to  see  anything 
but  a  centralized  empire  with  all  authority  in 
Parliament.  ** There  is  no  alternative:  either 
the  colonies  are  a  part  of  the  community  of 

*  Pitt's  statement  distinguishing  taxation  from  legislation 
ia  omitted  from  this  discussion  in  the  text.  See  for  partial  sup- 
port of  position  above  Grenville,  Speech  of  January  14,  1766. 
Pari.  Hist.,  XVI,  101.    See  also  Ibid.,  167. 

*  Except  Hutchinson's  speeches  of  1773. 


AMERICAN  FEDERALISM         201 

Great  Britain,  or  they  are  in  a  state  of  nature 
with  respect  to  her,  and  in  no  case  can  be  sub- 
ject to  the  jurisdiction  of  that  legislative  power 
which  represents  her  community,  which  is  the 
British  Parliament. ' '  Nothing  could  more  fully 
discredit  legalism  when  dealing  with  a  prac- 
tical problem  of  statesmanship ;  this  was  deny- 
ing that  Parliament  could  not  recognize  the  il- 
legality of  doing  what  in  practise  it  actually  had 
not  done  and  what  the  passing  years  were  prov- 
ing it  could  in  reality  not  do.^  — 1 

Even  before  1770  many  American  opponents 
of  parliamentary  taxation  had  been  hurried 
along  to  the  position  in  which  they  denied  that 
Parliament  possessed  any  power  over  them.^ 
It  would  appear,  however,  that  the  more  sober- 
minded  did  not  as  yet  openly  go  so  far ;  it  was 
easy  for  the  thoughtless  to  resent  British  as- 
sertion of  authority  by  the  simple  denial  of  all 

*In  a  pamphlet  attributed  to  Phelps,  The  Eights  of  the 
colonies  and  the  extent  of  the  legislative  authority  of  Great 
Britain  briefly  stated  and  considered  (1769),  pp.  11  and  12, 
we  find :  '  *  The  colonies,  therefore,  must  either  acknowledge 
the  legislative  power  of  Great  Britain  in  its  full  extent,  or  set 
themselves  up  as  independent  states;  I  say  in  its  full  extent, 
because  if  there  be  any  reserve  in  their  obedience,  which  they 
can  legally  claim,  they  must  have  a  power  within  themselves 
superior  to  that  of  the  mother  country;  for  her  obedience  to  the 
legislature  is  without  limitation."  Winsor  says  Phelps  was 
Under-Secretary  to  Lord  Sandwich.  Narr.  and  Crit.  Hist., 
VI,  85. 

^See  for  example  J.  K.  Hosmer,  Life  of  Thomas  Hutchin- 
son, 134. 


202  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

authority.  There  is  no  such  declaration,  how- 
ever, in  the  American  state  papers.  There  was 
still  readiness,  as  there  continued  to  be  after 
1770,  to  acquiesce  in  British  regulation  of  the 
trade  of  the  empire,  and  in  such  royal  control 
as  was  consistent  with  practise  and  the  charters. 
In  1770  when  the  long  controversy  arose  be- 
tween Hutchinson  and  the  Massachusetts  leg- 
islature over  the  right  to  remove  the  legisla- 
ture to  Cambridge,  Hutchinson  declared  that 
the  Boston  men,  having  denied  the  power  of 
Parliament  over  them,  were  now  prepared  to 
deny  the  power  of  the  crown.  It  is  perfectly 
true  that  that  controversy  concerned  the  power 
of  the  crown;  it  involved  the  question  whether 
the  prerogative  could  be  used  freely  and  arbi- 
trarily and  in  disregard  of  established  laws  and 
the  charter  but  certainly  till  that  time  the  colo- 
nists had  not  committed  themselves  to  the  doc- 
trine that  Parliament  was  totally  powerless,  nor 
did  they  then  deny  in  toto  the  authority  of  the 
crown.  As  before  1770  they  had  asserted  that 
there  were  bounds  to  the  authority  of  Parlia- 
ment, so  now  they  rejected  the  notion  that  suffi- 
cient excuse  for  a  governor's  acts  was  his  sim- 
ple declaration  that  he  had  received  orders  from 
Westminster.  Even  in  the  exercise  of  the  pre- 
rogative, there  must  be  recognition  of  the  legal 


AMERICAN  FEDERALISM         203 

entity  and  tlie  legal  competence  of  the  colony 
as  an  integral  portion  of  an  integral  empire; 
that  was  the  position  of  the  Massachusetts  leg- 
islature translated  into  modem  terms. 

Students  of  the  Revolution  that  believe  the 
movement  was  economic  in  origin,  character  and 
purpose,  may  not  deny  that,  after  1768,  Parlia- 
ment had  no  express  hope  or  intention  of  ob- 
taining revenue  from  America.  From  that  time 
on,  British  interest  was  largely,  if  not  wholly, 
confined  to  asserting  parliamentary  omnipo- 
tence, or,  if  this  seems  too  strong,  confined  to 
an  insistence  upon  the  supreme  power  of  Par- 
liament and  to  resisting  what  they  believed,  un- 
der the  tutelage  of  American  governors,  was  a 
conscious  tendency  toward  independence.  In- 
deed, especially  after  1768,  but  to  a  consider- 
able extent  from  1766,  the  question  was  not  so 
much  whether  the  colonies  would  pay  taxes  as 
whether  they  would  acknowledge  the  legal  ob- 
ligation; and  to  an  amazing  extent  the  conflict 
was  over  the  existence  or  non-existence  of  an 
abstract  right.  As  we  have  already  seen,  much 
of  the  colonial  argument  was  in  defense  of  in- 
dividual liberty,  not  of  states  rights;  but  the 
center  of  the  controversy  was  whether  or  not 
Parliament  was  possessed  of  limitless  author- 
ity. 


204  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

The  colonists  at  least  claimed  to  be  satisfied 
with  the  old  regime,  in  which  power  had  been 
divided,  and  in  which  Parliament  had  chiefly 
shown  its  power  by  the  regulation  of  trade.^ 
The  parliamentarians  insisted  that  in  the  law 
of  the  empire  the  will  of  Parliament  was  noth- 
ing more  nor  less  than  supreme  and  all-inclu- 
sive. The  colonists  insisted,  though  they  did 
not  use  this  phraseology,  that  old  practises  of 
the  empire  were  the  law  of  the  empire  and  thus, 
in  modern  phraseology,  they  demanded  the  rec- 
ognition of  a  composite  empire  based  on  law. 
Even  if  we  admit  the  presence  of  many  eco- 
nomic and  social  forces,  we  find  in  actual  con- 
flict two  theories  of  imperial  order;  and  in  this 
discussion  after  1768,  if  not  before,  the  English 
parliamentarians  and  pamphleteers  were  vic- 
tims of  certain  dogmas  of  political  science  curi- 

* ' '  Every  advantage  that  could  arise  from  commerce  they 
have  offered  us  without  reserve;  and  their  language  to  us  has 
been — 'Restrict  us,  as  much  as  you  please  in  acquiring  property 
by  regulating  our  trade  to  your  advantage;  but  claim  not  the 
disposal  of  that  property  after  it  has  been  acquired — Be  satis- 
fied with  the  authority  you  exercised  over  us  before  the  present 
Reign.'  "  Additional  Observations  on  the  nature  and  value 
of  Civil  Liberty,  and  the  War  with  America,  by  Richard  Price. 

''And  when  men  are  driven  for  wnnt  of  argument,  they  fly 
to  this  as  their  last  resource — 'acts  of  parliament  (say  their 
advocates)  are  sacred,  and  should  be  implicitly  submitted  to — • 
for  if  the  supreme  power  does  not  lodge  somewhere  operatively, 
and  effectually,  there  must  be  an  end  of  all  legislation.'  " 
Lord  Chatham's  Speech  on  the  20th  of  January,  1775.  Taken 
by  a  member,  page  9    (1775). 


AMERICAN  FEDERALISM         205 

ously  similar  to  the  doctrine  of  indivisible  sov- 
ereignty.^ How  often  did  Burke  deprecate  the 
continual  harping  on  Parliament's  authority,  on 
the  necessity  of  acknowledging  the  theoretical 
supremacy  of  Parliament.^  He  deplored  the 
common  talk  about  the  legal  rights.  Beyond 
Burke's  speeches  little  needs  be  cited  to  show 

*  If,  intemperately,  unwisely,  fatally,  you  sophisticate  and 
poison  the  very  source  of  government  by  urging  subtle  deduc- 
tions and  consequences  odious  to  those  you  govern  from  the 
unlimited  and  illimitable  nature  of  sovereignty,  you  will  teach 
them  by  those  means  to  call  that  sovereignty  itself  in  question. 
When  you  drive  him  hard  the  boar  will  turn  upon  the  hunters. 
If  that  sovereignty  and  their  freedom  cannot  be  reconciled, 
which  will  they  take?  They  will  cast  your  sovereignty  in  your 
face,  nobody  will  be  argued  into  slavery. ' '  Burke  '  *  Speech  on 
American  Taxation,"  Works,  vol.  II,  p.  73.  See  also  Ibid.,  pp. 
141-142,  for  Burke's  wishing  to  see  the  colonies  admitted  to 
an  interest  in  the  constitution,  an  evidence  that  he  too  recog- 
nized in  some  measure  the  need  of  formal  statement. 

^An  illustration  of  the  same  thing  may  be  seen  in  an 
American  source: 

''Moreover,  when  we  consider  that  Parliamentary  taxations 
are  not  as  to  their  present  value,  a  matter  of  moment,  either  to 
the  mother  country,  or  the  colonies;  that  the  contention  between 
us  is  upon  the  points  of  principle  and  precedent;  that  it  is 
not  the  quantum,  but  the  manner  of  exacting  our  unconstitu- 
tional impost,  which  is  the  bone  of  contention,  our  public 
jealousies  must  necessarily  be  increased. 

"When  the  taxation  was  more  general,  there  was  some 
colour  for  the  assertion  in  the  Revenue  Act,  that  it  was  in- 
tended for  the  safety  and  defence  of  the  colonies.  But  it  is 
not  only  true,  that  this  cannot  be  asserted  of  the  paltry  duty 
on  tea;  we  know,  we  were  assured  by  our  enemies,  that  when 
the  other  articles  charged  by  the  Revenue  Acts  were  exempted 
by  the  partial  repeal,  the  duty  on  tea  was  left  as  a  standing 
memorial  of  the  right  of  Parliament  to  tax  Americans. ' '  Force, 
Archives,  Fourth  Series,  I,  256  note — copied  from  the  Neio  York 
Gazetteer,  May  12,  1774. 


206  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

the  essentially  legalistic  character  of  the  whole 
discussion. 

It  may  be  rash  to  assert  that  the  colonists 
were  less  insistent  upon  knowing  what  the  con- 
stitution of  the  empire  was  than  were  the  Eng- 
lishmen, though  there  seems  no  reason  to  doubt 
that  the  colonists  would  have  willingly  accepted 
the  old  practise  as  sufficient,  if  it  were  not 
threatened.  Still,  the  colonists  desired  to  know 
precisely  what  were  American  rights;  and  in 
this  respect  possibly  America  was  more  legal- 
istic than  Britain,  because  Parliament  insisted 
on  the  existence  of  unlimited  power — asserted, 
one  might  not  unjustly  say,  that  Parliament 
was  above  the  law — while  the  colonists  asserted 
that  Parliament  was  bound  by  rigid  law.  *  ^  The 
patchwork  government  of  America,''  wrote  Ber- 
nard in  1765,^  ^^will  last  no  longer;  the  neces- 
sity of  a  parliamentary  establishment  of  the 
governments  of  America  upon  fixed  constitu- 
tional principles,  is  brought  out  with  a  precipi- 
tation which  could  not  have  been  foreseen  but  a 
year  ago;  and  is  become  more  urgent,  by  the 
very  incidents  which  make  it  more  difficult.'' 
At  this  time,  it  will  be  remembered,  he  proposed 
an  extraordinary  Parliament,  in  which  there 
were  to  be  American  representatives,  which 

*  Select  Letters,  p.  33. 


AMERICAN  FEDERALISM         207 

should  form  and  establish  '^a  general  and  uni- 
form system  of  American  government'';  ^^and 
let  the  relation  of  America  be  determined  and 
ascertained  by  a  solemn  Recognition;  so  that 
the  rights  of  the  American  governments,  and 
their  subordination  to  that  of  Great  Britain, 
may  no  longer  be  a  subject  of  doubt  and  dispu- 
tation.'' In  1766  he  declares  that  *Hhe  Stamp 
Act  is  become  in  itself  a  matter  of  indiif  erence ; 
it  is  swallowed  up  in  the  importance  of  the  ef- 
fects of  which  it  has  been  the  cause.  .  .  .  And 
as  the  relation  between  Great  Britain  and  the 
colonies  has  not  only  been  never  settled,  but 
scarce  even  formally  canvassed,  it  is  the  less 
surprising,  that  the  ideas  of  it  on  one  side  of  the 
water  and  on  the  other  are  so  widely  different, 
to  reconcile  these,  and  to  ascertain  the  nature 
of  the  subjection  of  the  colonies  to  the  crown 
of  Great  Britain,  will  be  a  work  of  time  and 
difficulty." 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  Bernard  was 
right ;  the  problem  of  the  day  was  the  problem 
of  imperial  organization:  were  Englishmen  or 
Americans  capable  of  finding  a  law  of  the  em- 
pire? ^    If  so,  that  law  must  be  consonant  with 

*By  *Maw"  I  do  not  mean  that  there  was  a  demand  for  a 
parliamentary  act;  I  mean  at  the  least  an  evident  understand- 
ing, at  the  most  a  formal  acknowledgment  of  power  and  the 


208  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

practical  realities ;  it  must  be  a  formulation  of 
the  principles  of  relationship  which  recognized 
not  centralization  but  distribution.^  As  an  in- 
dication of  the  fact  that  men  were  discussing 
legal  rights,  and  losing  sight  of  financial  re- 
turns, it  may  be  sufficient  for  the  earlier  days  to 
refer  to  the  comments  in  the  Parliament ar^^ 
History  ^  on  the  debate  about  the  Circular  Let- 
ter. It  was  insisted  by  opponents  of  the  min- 
istry in  debate  on  the  Massachusetts  Circular 
Letter  and  in  respect  to  the  revenue  laws  * '  that 
the  inutility  of  these  laws  was  so  evident,  that 
the  ministers  did  not  even  pretend  to  support 
them  upon  that  ground,  but  rested  their  defense 

extent  of  it,  a  formal  recognition  of  the  complete  authority  of 
Parliament  or,  on  the  other  hand,  of  the  width  and  depth  of 
the  actual  colonial  legal  competence. 

^  It  is  plain,  too,  that  Hutchinson,  a  legal-minded  man,  also 
felt  in  the  days  of  Bernard's  governorship,  as  later,  that  the 
constitution  must  be  settled.  * '  I  wish  to  see  known,  established 
principles,  one  general  rule  of  subjection,  which  once  acknowl- 
edged, any  attempts  in  opposition  to  them  will  be  more  easily 
crushed."  Letter  of  April  21,  1766,  quoted  in  Quincy  Beports, 
443-444.  "Our  misfortune  is  the  different  apprehension  of 
the  nature  and  degree  of  our  dependence.  I  wish  to  see  it 
settled,  known,  and  admitted;  for  while  the  rules  of  law  are 
vague  and  uncertain,  especially  in  such  fundamental  points,  our 
condition  is  deplorable  in  general."  Letter  of  December  31, 
1766,  Hosmer's  Hutchinson,  p.  121. 

Only  one  other  question — and  that  intimately  associated 
with  the  first — vied  with  it  in  importance:  Were  there  or 
were  there  not  rooted  in  the  British  constitution  fundamental 
principles  of  individual  liberty  superior  to  legislative  authority 
and  must  they  be  recognized  in  the  British  legislation  for 
colonial  affairs? 

^  XVI,  p.  488. 


AMERICAN  FEDERALISM         209 

upon  the  expediency  of  establishing  the  right  of 
taxation.'*  And  if  we  turn  again  to  Dickinson, 
we  find  the  same  thing  in  a  different  guise — the 
necessity  of  law  in  the  empire — not  a  law  secur- 
ing centralized  authority  but  freedom.  There 
could  be  no  freedom  without  legal  restriction: 
**For  who  are  a  free  people?  Not  those,  over 
whom  government  is  reasonably  and  equitably 
exercised,  but  those,  who  live  under  a  govern- 
ment so  constitutionally  checked  and  controlled 
that  proper  provision  is  made  against  its  being 
otherwise  exercised."^ 

We  might  wisely  spend  much  time  in  consid- 
ering the  dispute  in  1770  already  referred  to — 
the  dispute  as  to  whether  instructions  could 
ipso  facto  dispose  of  all  matters  of  constitu- 
tional right  of  the  colonies,  or  whether  even  the 
crown  was  limited  in  imperial  authority  by  the 
fact  of  the  existence  of  competent  and  legally 
recognized  colonial  legislatures.  But  passing 
over  those  three  years  or  so  of  legalistic  dis- 
pute, let  us  come  to  ^Hhe  great  controversy'*  of 
1773.  In  considering  this  we  can  echo  John 
Adams'  expression  of  amazement  at  Hutchin- 
son's audacity  in  throwing  down  the  gauntlet. 
The  truth  probably  is  that  Hutchinson  had  been 
grievously  tried  for  years,  not  alone  by  what  he 

^Memoirs  of  the  Eistorical  Society  of  Penn.,  XIV,  p.  356. 


^ 


210  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

considered  the  unmannerly  conduct  of  the  rab- 
ble, but  by  the  doctrines  which  he  heard  in  the 
market  place  and  perhaps  in  legislative  halls. 
He  believed  that  the  theories  of  the  malcontents 
were  unsound  and  that  he  in  the  plenitude  of  his 
wisdom  could  establish  their  invalidity ;  and  he 
prepared  therefore  to  bring  his  heaviest  artil- 
lery to  bear  upon  the  unreasoning  followers  of 
Samuel  Adams  and  against  the  arch  agitator 
himself.  What  he  wished  to  do,  be  it  noticed, 
was  to  demolish  a  false  theory  of  the  empire  and 
bring  every  one  to  acknowledge,  not  the  wisdom 
of  obnoxious  legislation,  but  the  legal  authority 
of  Parliament.  By  this  time  doubtless  there 
was  much  talk  about  complete  freedom  from 
parliamentary  control,  but  there  had  been  little 
if  any  formal  public  announcement  by  the  radi- 
cals of  anything  more  than  a  freedom  from  taxa- 
tion. 

Hutchinson,  it  must  be  said,  had  considerable 
reason  for  having  confidence  in  his  massed  at- 
tack ;  for  his  argument  was  able  and  compelling, 
serving  by  its  weight  to  bring  into  play  all  the 
open  and  masked  batteries  of  the  opposition. 
He  finally  reached  in  his  first  paper  a  position 
from  which  he  believed  he  could  discharge  one 
final  and  conclusive  volley ;  he  was  prepared  to 
use  an  undeniable  principle  of  political  science ; 


AMERICAN  FEDERALISM         211 

he  believed  he  could  silence  his  enemies  with 
its  mere  pronouncement :  **It  is  impossible  there 
should  be  two  independent  Legislatures  in  the 
one  and  the  same  state/*  ^  Despite  all  the  dis- 
cussion that  had  gone  on,  despite  the  fact  that 
Britain  had  been  practising  federalism,  Hutch- 
inson could  see  nothing  but  the  theory  of  cen- 
tralized legislative  omnipotence  and  could  not 
conceive  of  distribution  of  power  between  mu- 
tually independent  legislative  bodies.  And  yet 
this  undeniable  axiom  of  political  science  was  to 
be  proved  untrue  in  the  course  of  fifteen  years 
by  the  establishment  of  fourteen  independent 
legislatures  in  the  single  federal  state,  the 
United  States  of  America. 

The  two  branches  of  the  legislature  met 
Hutchinson's  general  argument  somewhat  dif- 
ferently. The  house  argued  valiantly  for  com- 
plete freedom  from  parliamentary  control;  in 
facing  the  alternative  of  complete  freedom  from 
Parliament  and  complete  subservience,  they  un- 
hesitatingly chose  the  former,  though  they  did 
seem  to  recognize  the  possibility  of  drawing  a 
line  between  the  supreme  authority  of  Parlia- 
ment and  total  independence.^     The   council, 

*  Mass.  State  Papers,  p.  340. 

^  That  is  to  say,  they  did  not  deny  the  possibility  of  dis- 
tribution and  a  line  of  distinction  between  governments  in  the 
empire.    ' '  And,  indeed,  it  is  difficult,  if  possible,  to  draw  a  line 


212  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

wiser  and  more  conservative  than  the  house,  an- 
nounced federalism;  they  contended  that  the 
colony  had  **  property  in  the  privileges  granted 
to  it/'  i.  e.,  an  indefeasible  legal  title:  ^*But, 
as  in  fact,  the  two  powers  are  not  incompatible, 
and  do  subsist  together,  each  restraining  its  acts 
to  their  constitutional  objects,  can  we  not  from 
hence,  see  how  the  supreme  power  may  super- 
vise, regulate,  and  make  general  laws  for  the 
kingdom,  without  interfering  with  the  privileges 
of  the  subordinate  powers  within  it  T '  ^    This 

of  distinction  between  the  universal  authority  of  Parliament 
over  the  colonies,  and  no  authority  at  all. "  '  *  If  your  Excel- 
lency expects  to  have  the  line  of  distinction  between  -the  su- 
preme authority  of  Parliament,  and  the  total  independence  of 
the  colonies  drawn  by  us,  we  would  say  it  would  be  an  arduous 
undertaking,  and  of  very  great  importance  to  all  the  other 
colonies;  and  therefore,  could  we  conceive  of  such  a  line,  we 
should  be  unwilling  to  propose  it,  without  their  consent  in  Con- 
gress. ' '    Hosmer,  Hutchinson,  pp.  382,  395. 

^  Hosmer,  Hutchinson,  p.  412.  It  will  not  do  to  argue  that 
they  meant,  by  "subordinate,"  subject  to  the  whim  and  con- 
trol of  Parliament;  for  that  is  just  what  they  were  arguing 
against.  They  denied  that  supremacy  meant  complete  unlimited 
power,  or  that  subordination  meant  unlimited  submission.  Of 
course  *  *  coordinate ' '  is  more  nearly  expressive  of  federalism 
than  "subordinate";  but  the  principle  these  men  had  in  mind 
is  that  of  distribution,  legal  distribution,  by  which  the  parts 
legally  control  local  affairs,  a  general  government  regulates 
and  safeguards  general  affairs. 

I  omit,  to  save  space,  the  extended  argument,  but  I  must 
call  attention  to  their  assertion  of  legal  possession  of  constitu- 
tional right  by  the  colonies  as  integral  portions  of  the  empire, 
and  also  to  their  declaration,  in  a  delicate  manner,  that  Hutch- 
inson was  dealing  with  theories  and  disregarding  the  fact,  and 
that  fact  was  the  distribution  of  powers  not  centralization: 
"What  has  been  here  said  (i.  e.,  by  Hutchinson),  concerning 
supreme  authority,  has  no  reference  to  the  manner  in  which  it 


AMERICAN  FEDERALISM         213 

is  a  clear,  precise  and  thorough  description  of 
federalism.  It  is  plain  enough,  then,  that  there 
were  some  clear-headed  men,  who,  in  the  years 
just  before  the  final  break  with  England,  were 
not  silenced  by  the  fulminations  of  British  pam- 
phleteers or  the  dogmatic  assertions  of  Hutch- 
inson into  a  belief  that  the  empire  was  simple 
and  unitary;  nor  were  they  as  yet  ready  to  ac- 
cept the  learned  and  technical  argument  of  John 
Adams,  though  buttressed  by  pedantic  reference 
to  Calvin's  case,  that  the  empire  was  held  to- 
gether by  the  king,  a  personal  union  only. 

The  American  theory  of  federalism  is  stated 
with  such  amazing  accuracy  in  an  answer  to 
Doctor  Johnson's  Taxation  No  Tyranny,^  that 
it  deserves  quotation  at  considerable  length: 

*'Now  this,  in  abstract,  sounds  well.  When 
we  speak  of  the  Legislature  of  a  community, 
we  suppose  only  one  Legislature;  and  where 
there  is  but  one,  it  must  of  necessity  have  the 
right  you  speak  of;  otherwise,  no  taxes  at  all 
could  be  raised  in  that  community.  .  .  .  Now 
the  present  dispute  is  not  with  respect  to  this 

has  been,  in  fact,  exercised ;  but  is  wholly  confined  to  its  general 
nature.'^  Ibid.,  p.  413.  These  arguments  are  also  to  be  found 
in  Mass.  State  Papers,  as  well  as  in  the  appendix  to  Hosmer's 
Hutchi/nson. 

•  A n  answer  to  a  Pamphlet  entitled  ' '  Taxation  No 
Tyranny,"  found  in  Force's  American  Archives,  Fourth  Series, 
I,  1450,  latter  part  of  paragraph  on  p.  1451. 


V 


214  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

Island  alone,  wliich  certainly  has  but  one  Legis- 
lature, but  with  respect  to  the  British  Empire 
at  large,  in  which  there  are  many  Legislatures ; 
or  many  Assemblies  claiming  to  be  so.  .  .  . 
From  the  state  of  the  British  Empire,  composed 
of  extensive  and  dispersed  Dominions,  and  from 
the  nature  of  its  Government,  a  multiplicity  of 
Legislatures,  or  of  Assemblies  claiming  to  be 
so,  have  arisen  in  one  Empire.  It  is  in  some  de- 
gree a  new  case  in  legislation,  and  must  be  gov- 
erned therefore  more  by  its  own  circumstances, 
and  by  the  genius  of  our  peculiar  Constitution, 
than  by  abstract  notions  of  Government  at 
large.  Every  Colony,  in  fact,  has  two  Legisla- 
tures, one  interiour  and  Provincial,  viz.:  the 
Colony  Assembly;  the  other  exteriour  and 
imperial,  viz.:  the  British  Parliament.  .  .  . 
Neither  will  the  unity  of  the  Empire  be  in  dan- 
ger from  the  Provincial  Legislature  being  thus 
exclusive  as  to  points.  It  is  perfectly  sufiQcient, 
if  the  British  Legislature  be  supreme  as  to  all 
those  things  which  are  essential  to  Great 
Britain^ s  being  substantially  the  head  of  the 
Empire ;  a  line  not  very  difficult  to  be  drawn,  if 
it  were  the  present  subject.  Neither  is  there 
any  absurdity  in  there  being  two  Assemblies, 
each  of  them  sufficient,  or,  if  you  will,  supreme, 
as  to  objects  perfectly  distinct;  for  this  plain 


AMERICAN  FEDERALISM         215 

reason,  that  the  objects  being  perfectly  distinct, 
they  cannot  clash.  The  Colonist,  therefore,  al- 
lowing that  the  supreme  power  or  Legislature, 
where  there  is  but  one,  must  have  the  right  you 
speak  of,  will  say  that  with  respect  to  him,  there 
are  two,  and  that  the  Provincial  Legislature  is 
the  supreme  power  as  to  taxation  for  his  Colony. 
And  so  the  controversy,  notwithstanding  your 
position,  will  remain  just  where  it  began." 

The  discussions  in  the  Continental  Congress 
of  1774  show  us  the  trouble  that  the  colonists 
had  in  reaching  a  satisfactory  theory.  By  that 
time  many  had  come  to  the  conclusion  that  Par- 
liament possessed  no  power  to  pass  laws  govern- 
ing the  colonies.  But  the  situation  and  the  ex- 
perience were  too  plain,  and  Congress  **from 
the  necessities  of  the  case"  announced  that  par- 
liamentary regulation  of  trade  would  be  ac- 
cepted, but  not  taxation  external  or  internal. 
They  proposed  as  a  working  basis  for  the  whole 
system — perhaps  no  longer  to  be  termed  an  em- 
pire if  there  was  no  legislature  with  any  im- 
perial power  legally  speaking — the  distinction 
between  taxation  and  regulation  of  commerce, 
and  they  really  put  themselves  back,  as  far  as 
practise  was  concerned,  nearly  if  not  quite  in 
the  position  of  eleven  years  before.  It  cannot 
be  supposed,  as  they  accepted  the  king  as  their 


216  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

king,  that  the  Congress  of  1774  would  deny  the 
general  right  of  the  mother  country,  through 
the  executive  head,  to  make  war  and  peace,  man- 
age diplomacy,  hold  the  back  lands,  control  In- 
dian affairs  and  probably  the  post  office — in 
other  words,  to  exercise  the  significant  powers 
bestowed  on  the  central  government  of  the 
United  States  under  our  Constitution.  They 
were  prepared  to  acknowledge  a  political  order, 
in  which  all  the  great  powers  bestowed  on  our 
central  government  under  the  Constitution  with 
the  exception  of  the  power  to  tax  should  be  in 
the  hands  of  the  central  authorities  at  Westmin- 
ster; and  they  evidently  accepted  and  promul- 
gated the  possibility  of  distribution  of  power.^ 

*  I  have  not  attempted  in  this  paper  to  cite  all  the  instances 
of  an  appreciation  of  the  fact  that  the  discussion  was  over  the 
possibility  of  distribution  of  power  in  the  empire.  Let  me 
refer  to  a  letter  of  Gouverneur  Morris  to  Mr,  Penn,  May  20, 
1774.  It  speaks  of  the  danger  of  America's  falling  "under  the 
worst  of  all  possible  dominions  .  .  .  the  domination  of  a  riot- 
ous mob,"  and  then  proposes  "a  safe  compact"  between  the 
"colonies  and  the  mother  country,"  "internal  taxation,"  i.  e., 
"to  be  left  with  ourselves,"  "the  right  of  regulating  trade  to 
be  vested  in  Great  Britain."  Of  course  the  compact  was  to 
form  the  legal  and  binding  authority  for  the  exercise  of  power. 
Force,  American  Archives,  Fourth  Series,  I,  342-343. 

Notice  also  that  the  Pennsylvania  Convention  of  1774  speaks 
of  the  desirability  of  agreements  with  Great  Britain;  she  is 
to  renounce  certain  claims  and  America  is  to  accept  certain 
statutes;  money  is  to  be  given  to  the  king.  It  also  dwells  on 
the  compact  which  has  to  do  largely  with  trade:  "With  such 
parts  of  the  world  only  as  she  has  appointed  us  to  deal,  we 
shall  continue  to  deal;  and  such  commodities  only  as  she  has 
permitted  us  to  bring  from  them,  we  shall  continue  to  bring. 


AMERICAN  FEDERALISM         217 

In  drawing  np  the  Declaration  of  Independ- 
ence the  Continental  Congress  accepted  the  the- 
ory that  Parliament  had  had  no  legal  authority 
over  them;  but  the  Articles  of  Confederation 
were  drawn  on  the  principle  of  distribution  of 
powers.  Of  course  it  may  properly  be  said  that 
the  Articles  did  not  provide  for  the  creation  of 
an  imperial  state.  If,  however,  we  look  to  see 
how  far  they  carried  on  the  actual  distribution 
which  had  existed  in  practise  in  the  old  empire, 
we  see  much  in  common  between  the  empire  and 
the  Confederation.  We  do  not  find  in  the  new 
system,  of  course,  any  right  in  the  Congress — 
the  new  central  authority — to  exercise  some  of 
the  functions  formerly  exercised  by  the  crown 
in  council;  there  was  no  right  to  appoint  gov- 
ernors, or  to  instruct  them,  or  to  disapprove  of 
the  state  laws.  But  the  great  powers  of  war 
and  peace,  foreign  affairs,  the  post  office  and 
Indian  affairs  belonged  to  Congress ;  and  it  was 
understood  before  adoption  that  the  tremen- 
dously important  matter  of  the  ownership  of  the 

The  executive  and  controlling  powers  of  the  crown  will  retain 
their  present  full  force  and  operation."  Ihid.,  561.  Vide 
also  among  others  plans,  Proposal  for  a  Plan  toward  a 
Peconciliation  and  Reunion,  etc.,  by  one  of  the  Public  (London, 
1778). 

I  omit  in  this  paper  mention  of  various  plans  of  imperial 
order.  They  are  important  as  disclosures  of  effort  to  distribute 
powers  on  a  legal  basis. 


218  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

back  lands,  and  the  administration  of  the  back 
settlements — in  other  words,  the  extension  of 
the  empire — was  to  be  in  the  hands  of  Congress. 
Only  a  detailed  examination  would  show  how 
much  of  the  old  practical  system  of  the  empire 
was  formulated  in  the  Articles.  It  is  sufficient 
now  to  say,  and  it  is  quite  unnecessary  to  say 
it,  that  very  much  of  the  old  system  was  there 
formulated,  and  the  Articles  carried  on  very 
distinctly  the  principle  of  distribution  of  pow- 
ers and  on  the  whole  provided  for  governments 
with  distinct  spheres  of  action.^  A  student  of 
the  Articles  will  of  course  be  carried  back  to  the 
Albany  plan  and  even  to  the  New  England  Con- 
federacy of  1643;  but  he  will  be  hopelessly  at 
sea  unless  he  grasps  the  fact  that  the  contents 
of  the  document  are  distinctly  the  products  of 
imperial  history,  and  they  constitute,  (1)  the 
first  quasi-legal  formulation  of  imperial  exist- 
ence, (2)  the  immediate  preparation  for  ulti- 
mate real  and  full  formulation  in  the  Constitu- 
tion. 

The  two  powers  of  which  there  had  been  much 
discussion  in  the  ten  years  before  independence 
were  not  adequately  provided  for  in  the  Con- 
federation.   Congress,  the  new  general  govern- 

^  Even  the  system  of  admiralty  jurisdiction  was  carried  for- 
ward through  the  Articles  into  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States. 


AMERICAN  FEDERALISM         219 

ment,  was  not  given  the  right  to  raise  money  by 
taxation,  the  Articles  accepting  the  principle  of 
requisitions  which  the  colonists  as  part  of  the 
British  empire  had  insisted  on.  Everybody 
knows  that  requisitions  proved  a  failure  in  the 
new  system,  and  this  fact  in  a  way  gave  a  tardy 
justice  to  the  arguments  of  the  parliamentarians 
in  the  days  before  the  Revolution.  It  is  more 
surprising,  however,  that  Congress  was  not 
given  the  right  to  regulate  trade,  inasmuch  as, 
almost  to  the  last,  the  colonies  had  either  openly 
acknowledged  parliamentary  authority  in  the 
matter  or  openly  professed  a  willingness  to  ac- 
quiesce in  the  practical  exercise  of  such  author- 
ity. The  failure  to  grant  the  authority  to  Con- 
gress shows  how  particularism  had  grown,  or 
it  discloses  an  inability  to  see  that  the  need  of 
imperial  regulation  of  trade  was  just  as  vital  in 
the  new  system  as  in  the  old.  Because  Congress 
did  not  possess  these  two  powers,  taxation  and 
regulation  of  commerce,  the  Confederation 
proved  a  failure. 

The  Confederation  might  very  well,  we  may 
suppose,  have  proved  a  failure  even  if  Congress 
had  been  given  these  two  essential  powers.  As 
to  that  little  or  nothing  need  be  said ;  it  is  a  very 
old  story;  the  states  suffered  from  the  natural 
effects  of  a  Revolution,  and,  had  Congress  had 


220  AMERICA  AND  BRITAIN 

authority  on  paper,  license  and  particularistic 
folly  might  have  made  it  impossible  to  go  on, 
until  the  natural  reaction  in  favor  of  national- 
ism and  order  set  in.  However  that  may  be, 
these  two  powers  had  to  be  bestowed,  conditions 
proved  it ;  and  in  the  new  Constitution  Congress 
was  given  power  to  tax  for  national  purposes 
and  to  regulate  commerce.  The  principle  of 
federalism  was  recognized,  formulated  and 
legalized  in  the  Constitution;  the  new  govern- 
ment was  given  its  distinct  sphere  of  action  and 
was  made  the  recipient  of  a  body  of  powers, 
carefully  named  and  carefully  deposited  in  their 
proper  places;  but  in  the  selection  and  deposi- 
tion little  needed  to  be  done  but  to  follow  the 
practises  of  the  old  British  colonial  system. 

The  Convention  of  1787  had  difficulty  in  see- 
ing the  whole  complicated  scheme  as  a  working 
mechanism;  but  how  could  the  members  pos- 
sibly have  imagined  it  at  all,  or  provided  for  the 
scheme  which  in  its  essentials  was  the  basis  of 
federalism  the  world  over,  without  the  aid  of  the 
historical  forces  and  the  old  practises?  Save 
perhaps  with  the  old  troublesome  problem  of 
the  militia,  the  military  question  in  the  federal 
state,  they  had  little  trouble  in  determining  what 
should  be  the  distribution  and  classification  of 
powers.    Their  chief  difficulty  was  again  the  old 


AMERICAN  FEDERALISM         221 

one — colonial  disobedience,  which  was  now  state 
willfulness ;  and  this  difficulty  was  surmounted, 
as  we  know,  by  firm  adherence  to  the  principle 
of  distinction  between  local  and  general  author- 
ity, and  by  recognizing  that  each  governmental 
authority  was  competent  and  supreme  within  its 
own  sphere  and  had  the  legal  power  to  enforce 
its  lawful  acts  on  its  own  citizens.  Perhaps 
both  parts  of  this  principle  of  cohesion  and  of 
authority — of  cohesion  because  of  division,  and 
of  authority  because  of  immediate  operation — 
were  inherited  from  the  old  empire;  certainly 
the  former  one  was. 


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